Morning All,

Excited to share that our very own Lead Reporter, Anay Mridul, is in town for the Nectar Tasty Awards (read our coverage here), and will be at Future Food Tech as well as a couple of other side events. I’m already jealous he got to have what I consider to be one of the Top 3 Salads in The World, Rad Radish’s Kale Caesar. If you are in SF, look out for Anay and drop him a message on LI. Looking forward to all our Cali reporting and a special thanks to Nectar for inviting Green Queen to partner on the Awards.

I was sent H&M x EY’s new white paper, ‘Accelerating Fashion Decarbonisation’, earlier this week, and it got me thinking about everything we do in the future food sector.

The paper, which includes insights from HSBC and the Apparel Impact Institute (Aii), argues for reframing supply chain emissions cuts as core business infrastructure, not a nice-to-have sustainability line item. In CFO speak: treat Scope 3 decarbonisation like you would any other risk management priority—shielding against climate shocks, locking in resilient suppliers, and boosting long-term competitiveness. The examples are practical, from governance frameworks to collaborative models that spread risk and cost. It’s aimed at finance leaders who need to see ROI in stability, not just carbon math.

What strikes me is how directly this maps onto food decarbonisation, and why we need to make the same pivot in how we talk about it. For too long, alternative proteins and sustainable supply chains have been pitched as “save the planet” moonshots. The last few years have painfully borne out how little the majority of folks care about protecting the planet and fighting climate change at all. This framing has kept us stuck: meat subsidies are going nowhere, emissions continue to climb unchecked, and investors (supposed impact funders who got in on the hype but have now soured) demand returns over resilience. The reality now is that food decarbonisation isn’t about the planet anymore. It’s about risk management, resilience, and food security—the language that actually moves money and gets CEOs and CFOs to pay attention.

And you don’t have to imagine Black Swan events. Food supply chains are already facing a range of complications, from droughts gutting soy crops in Brazi to heatwaves killing livestock across the US Midwest. These aren’t hypothetical; they’re pricing shocks and availability gaps that manufacturers and brands are already absorbing. The war in Iran is only adding more stress to the system, pushing up energy and fertiliser prices and making already tight margins and harvest risks even harder to manage, with big implications as you move downstream the end consumer.

Whether it’s precision fermentation, cultivated or blended inputs, the cost of NOT investing in these lower-emission alternatives means foregoing supply chain resilience and food security, and not being able to deliver stable pricing and availability when conventional meat hits its limits.

It’s no different from H&M’s textile mills: if your cotton supply is underwater half the year, you’re not sustainable; you’re exposed. The white paper’s tools, from de-risked loans for supplier upgrades to shared funds for tech transitions, can be applied directly to food tech.

Future food founders need to be talking to procurement teams and finance directors with balance sheet logic, rather than appealing for the green vote. H&M’s white paper shows the way: decarbonisation isn’t a cost centre. It’s crucial de-risking infrastructure.

-Sonalie

💡 Only On Green Queen

🥛 Industry Insider: These Are the World’s Best Plant-Based Dairy Products According to 2,000+ Non-Vegans
The Tasty Awards this week in San Francisco revealed that plant-based barista milks and coffee creamers have closed the flavour gap with dairy, though the average non-dairy product still has some way to go. Here’s what’s key to the category’s future.

🇦🇺 Opinion: Can Behavioural Science Change How A Nation Eats? Australia is About to Find Out
University of Queensland’s Dr David Fechner outlines the behavioural science project he’s working on, as part of a fellowship funded by the Australian government.

🥔 Health Insights: Can Protein Grown Inside Potatoes Help You Live Longer?
Reagenics Research produces protein inside potatoes via plant cell culture, and studies show its low methionine content can help build muscle and slow ageing. Could the spud be the key to longevity?

✅ Must-Read Headlines

⚪️ Swiss biomaterials firm Seprify raised $15.7 million to scale its cellulose-based alternatives to titanium dioxide.
💡Seprify is currently engaged with over 100 companies across human and pet food, personal care, cosmetics, and coatings.

🧁 Austria’s Neoh, which has developed a sugar replacement solution with plant-based functional fibres, secured new funding from investors including Rewe Group.
💡Zero+ has the same sweetness as table sugar, with a significantly lower impact on blood glucose, insulin, and C-peptide levels, and is gut-friendly.

🚫 South Dakota Governor Larry Rhoden has signed a bill that puts a five-year moratorium on the sale of cultivated meat, a month after vetoing a proposal to impose a permanent ban.
💡South Dakota is the eighth US state to ban cultivated meat, fuelled by arguments from Big Meat.

🏭 Scaling Manufacturing

🤝🏼 Danish fermentation startup Unibio has signed a deal with the Saudi Industrial Investment Group to build the world’s largest factory producing sustainable proteins from greenhouse gases.
💡The factory will use a dry gas feedstock allocation from the Saudi Ministry of Energy to produce 50,000 tonnes of single-cell protein annually, with plans to increase this to 300,000 tonnes in the coming years.

🇧🇷 Californian biotech Amyris has completed construction of a new manufacturing line at its precision fermentation plant in Brazil, marking its latest move in its post-bankruptcy rebuild.
💡Amyris has been around since 2003, operating a vertically integrated biomanufacturing setup to create customised sustainable ingredients for major companies across the world.

🤖 New Wave Biotech and iMEAN have teamed up to help biomanufacturers address the cost and viability gaps between the upstream and downstream parts of their scale-up efforts.
💡Both companies use a hybrid AI approach, meaning companies can virtually test thousands of production scenarios.

📚 Key Research

🇪🇺 A new report from the European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change outlines critical measures to curb agricultural emissions and meet the bloc’s climate goals, including the removal of livestock subsidies and encouraging plant-based diets.

🇬🇧 Brits could be eating cultivated meat as soon as next year, with the Food Standards Agency hoping to approve two proteins by early 2027, according to its latest report on future food innovations.

🏥 Catering giant Sodexo’s partnership with Nuffield Health, which saw them provide plant-based meals as the default option in UK hospitals, has resulted in a 22% decline in food-related emissions.

🚀 Everything Else In Future Food

🪸 US-based Marine Biologics unveiled SeaTex, a seaweed powder that can stabilise proteins and bind fats to offer clean-label food and drink formulations.

🍝 Sweden’s Smaqo has rolled out meatballs made with beef and mycoprotein in supermarkets within the ICA Gruppen network.

📱 US startup Wisecode debuted a verification programme for brands and a consumer-facing app designed to bring clarity to the ultra-processed food debate.

🍄‍🟫 UK-based mushroom specialist Urban Farm-Produce launched a range of lion’s mane meat alternatives that fit neatly into the growing demand for minimally processed, whole-food-forward options.

🍣 Planta, a pioneer in the North American plant-based restaurant industry, has been forced into liquidation after attempts to resurrect the sushi chain were unsuccessful.

🌱🍔  Future Food Quick Bites 

In our weekly column, Future Food Quick Bites, we round up the latest news and developments in the alternative protein and sustainable food industry. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers Elmhurst 1925’s new protein shakes, Fitgreenmind’s vegan documentary, and Japan’s new cell ag communication guide.

📆 Scene & Heard

🚀 Plan Ahead for Vitafoods Asia in September

🌏 Vitafoods Asia is the leading annual trade show in the Asia-Pacific region for the nutraceutical, functional food, and dietary supplement industries. It will bring together over 16,000+ professionals on 2nd-4th September; secure your spot here.

🧪 Nexture has opened applications for the 2026 cohort of its Generate startup program, which supports early-stage companies developing new ingredient technologies across areas like bakery innovation, alternative proteins, fats and oils, and nutrition solutions. Learn more and apply here.

💥 Carozzi has launched the second edition of Carozzi Sinergia Startup, its open innovation program aimed at accelerating solutions that will shape the future of food, developed in collaboration with international foodtech accelerator Eatable Adventures. Get more info here.