Swedish food-tech start-up Millow has appointed Fredrik Öhrn as its new CEO, and has announced that inventor and chief scientific officer, Mohammad J Taherzadeh, will be joining the company full-time.
The Gothenburg-based company produces clean label fermented protein products, made from Nordic oats and mycelium, for the foodservice industry.
Taherzadeh, the principal investor behind Millow’s dry-state fermentation platform, is leaving his position at the University of Borås to focus on Millow full-time, the company has revealed today (9 March 2026).
Additionally, Öhrn joins as chief executive amid the company’s preparation for commercial entry in Sweden this summer. He brings more than 20 years of commercial leadership experience and a track record of scaling businesses internationally.
Prior to joining Millow, he served as regional CEO of Nordic operations for one of Sodexo’s business divisions, where he led a growth programme across 30 countries.
Commenting on his appointment, Öhrn said: “What drew me to Millow is that the science works and the technology is proven. We launch in Sweden, but clean-label protein has a global demand.”
He added: “Foodservice operators from Stockholm to Singapore face the same pressure: shorter ingredient lists, less processing, more transparency. My job is to build the commercial platform that takes Millow there – market by market.”
Inventor and chief scientific officer Taherzadeh has worked in mycelium science and fermentation since 1999, and is ranked among the top 2% of researchers globally in his field by Stanford University.
He commented: “For a scientist, there is nothing more compelling than a place where your research has impact the same week you conduct it. Millow’s advanced laboratory and patented process allow me to do in months what would take years in a traditional academic setting.”
Millow’s product is made from a small number of whole-food ingredients via dry-state fermentation in under 24 hours. It contains no binders or additives while offering a fibrous, meat-like texture due to the mycelium growing through the oat matrix.
The company is building its production facility, a former Lego production hall in Stenkullen, Gothenburg, supported by the European Innovation Council’s EIC Accelerator. The site will house commercial-scale production and Millow’s advanced fermentation laboratory.
Entry to market via foodservice partnerships in Sweden this summer will begin with an initial focus on mince and formable formats.
