Conversation with Julia Schimanietz of ProteinDistillery

Conversation with Julia Schimanietz of ProteinDistillery

Sidestreams like brewer’s yeast are currently sold cheaply as animal feed. But companies like ProteinDistillery instead upcycles the biomass into functional protein that improves the taste and texture of alternatives to meat, dairy, and egg. To learn more, I spoke with Julia Schimanietz of ProteinDistillery.

FTW: What’s your background, and how did you end up working for ProteinDistillery?

Julia: “I started working in the food industry in 2020, doing food consulting, working for company builders, and so on. Marco Ries, one of the co-founders of ProteinDistillery, knew I was interested in food and took me on from the early days — I was employee #3. That was 18 months ago, now we’re almost 30 employees. I do business development, which means everything from planning production sites, helping with strategic goals, working on fundraising, and more.”

FTW: Who founded the company?

Julia: “It was founded in December 2021 by two university friends in Stuttgart, Christoph Pitter and Michael Baunach, plus Tomas Kurz and Marco Ries, who joined shortly after. They wanted to valorize proteins from microorganisms, and all had complementary skillsets from brewing and business development to biotech and engineering.”

FTW: What’s the problem you want to solve?

Julia: “Animal agriculture is a major emitter of greenhouse gases. And emerging markets are increasingly demanding animal-sourced foods. We also felt plant-based options [to alternatives to animal-sourced foods] could be much cleaner (clean label), a lot healthier, and more transparent for consumers. We saw a disconnect. Consumers simply don’t understand many of the E numbers and ingredients on current alternative products, such as methylcellulose, xanthan, carrageenan, gellan gum, and so on that are used instead of egg white to achieve e.g. gelling and stabilization.”

FTW: So what do you do — what is your innovation?"

Julia: “We provide food producers with a single solution in shortening their ingredient lists, by using a healthy, functional ingredient. Our protein does binding, emulsification, gelling, stabilization, and foaming. So it’s an alternative to egg white protein.”

FTW: Tell me more about your value chain.

Julia: “There are a lot of breweries in Germany. They typically send the brewer’s yeast to animal feed. We can purchase it cheaply. But we can use any fermented biomass, from the enzyme industry, bioethanol industry, etc. When we get the brewer’s yeast, we wash the cells, gently break the cells open, and get the protein fractions out. Then we dry the protein, and end up with a protein powder that can be sold B2B to food producers. It’s labeled ‘yeast protein’ on the list of ingredients, and it’s non-GMO.

We currently just use the protein, but are already working on valorizing the flavors, cell walls — a fibrous material — and more, to upcycle truly everything from the yeast cells.”

FTW: Who are these food producers you sell to?

Julia: “It’s a wide range — alternative dairy and cheese producers, meat alternative manufacturers, producers of functional food, industrial bakers, and more.”

FTW: If you manage to scale up, what impact will this have?

Julia: “In 2027 we can produce 2,500 tons annually. In comparison to pea protein we can save 150M liters of water, 1.4M sq. meters of land, and 1.1k tons of GHGs annually. Compared to beef protein the savings are even bigger.”

FTW: When will you start selling? 

Julia: “We currently produce samples for customers, and will start commissioning our demo plant in November this year, capable of producing 150 to 200 tons annually. The commercial plant should come online around 2027, which will be able to produce 2,500 tons annually. We’re aiming to be price competitive with egg protein and similar options.”

FTW: How big of a market is this?

Julia: “We estimate the TAM, total addressable market, at $47.6B for global functional ingredients alone.”

FTW: And you said you’re almost 30 members on the team?

Julia: “We’re currently 28 colleagues, and have built expertise in process development, product development, and engineering. We’re starting to build out our sales team now.”

FTW: How are you funded?

Julia: “We announced in March 2024 that we’d raised a $15M Seed, which was a mix of equity and debt. We didn’t want to finance machinery with equity money. We’re looking into doing a Series A in the near future.”

FTW: What asks do you have, for people reading this article?

Julia: “We’re interested in connecting with industrial partners, to help with upscaling. Companies with expertise in production in the food industry. We also want to engage with talent, especially around sales and business development next year.”

FTW: How can people get in touch with you?

Julia: “Email me!”