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Canadian food-tech company NS/TX has raised $10.5 million in funding to further scale its alternative protein manufacturing platform.
The $10.5 million includes a successful Series A funding close and non-dilutive grants. The round was co-led by Inter Ikea Development BV and Lever VC, and included participation from Good Startup, Verdex Capital, the company’s founder Chris Bryson, and non-dilutive capital from Protein Industries Canada.
NS/TX, the technology company behind plant-based seafood producer New/School Foods, is now initiating construction of its V2 assembly line. This will automate its manufacturing process, increasing capacity by more than ten times and further reducing production costs.
The line will be built and commissioned in the company’s 28,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Toronto, Canada.
NS/TX built and launched its V1 commercial assembly line in late 2024. It uses a proprietary texturization and scaffolding technology that is purpose-built to create meat and seafood alternative products.
Since then, the company said it has reduced production costs more than tenfold and validated the scalability of its technology through production trials, process breakthroughs, machinery upgrades and digital quality assurance augmentations to its assembly line. This resulted in new patents and equipment designs.
According to NS/TX, its platform solves several challenges commonly associated with meat and seafood alternative production. These include greater tuneability than traditional extrusion technologies, resulting in greater scalability and consistency.
The platform enables flexibility, catering for production of whole-cut-style products (such as steaks, fillets and other large structured formats) with support for ‘nearly any’ meat or seafood species analogue across the same assembly line process. It can also support non-whole-cut formats such as breaded strips and burgers.
Each different meat and seafood product’s macrostructure (shape and layering) and microstructure (muscle fibre width, length) can be replicated using the technology, enabling the development of a layered structure with the ability to adjust multiple different textural parameters.
Tuneable flavour profiles can be achieved using multiple flavour delivery systems within each scaffold, with support for oil-based flavours. The technology is engineered to deliver finished products with raw appearance that visually transform upon cooking, similar to conventional meat and seafood.
Additionally, catering to clean-label demand, the machinery allows development of meat and seafood analogues with no need for additives like methylcellulose. Multiple plant protein types can also be used, further boosting nutrition, as well as fats, flavours, colours and nutritional add-ons.
Founder and CEO Bryson commented: “We’re excited to embark on this next chapter of growth – by automating and scaling our platform, we will be able to produce meat alternatives that are cost-competitive and that finally meet customer demands”.
“With the added capacity that this new assembly line will provide, we will be able to work with leading brands across the globe to make our technology, production capacity and products available to them.”
