NZ biotech start-up Nutrition from Water (NXW) has won the ‘Nutrition For Tomorrow’ Award sponsored by Cargill for its microalgae-based whey product.
Presented in Singapore during the recent Future Food Asia conference, the award was given to NXW for its “innovative approach to nutrition and its significant impact on global health that doesn’t cost the earth.”
Founded in 2020, NXW claims to source out protein-rich nutrition from microscopic organisms found in freshwater and marine environments through fermentation. The start-up developed the technology via its partnership with marine science park, Cawthron Institute, with whom it says it is exploring 900 strains to optimise for nutrition solutions.
NXW says that because its Marine Whey product relies on organisms grown in fermenters it can therefore be harnessed with no interference to sentient marine life. What’s more, the company claims its production process requires only a fraction of the water, land, and time compared to other protein sources and emits a fraction of the greenhouse gases.
As part of the award, NXW will gain access to in-house expertise and capabilities provided by Cargill, which the start-up aims to use to scale its solutions and further refine and validate its prototypes.
Alex Worker, Co-Founder of NXW, said, “This accolade underscores the transformative potential of our approach to nutrition, which is rooted in planet-conscious innovation and global collaboration. We are grateful to Cargill for their generous support and look forward to leveraging their expertise to accelerate the impact of our solutions on a global scale.”
NXW CEO Toby Lane commented on how the award will support the start-up’s mission to develop an entirely new nutrition category through non-extractive marine science.
“Partnering with world-leading nutrition companies like Cargill is critical to building this category at the speed and scale that’s required,” Lane said.
The award comes just a week after the start-up rebranded to Nutrition from Water (NXW) from its original name of NewFish.
NXW says Marine Whey is targeted for a variety of needs including sports, medical, aged and affordable nutrition categories. The company is backed by leading biotechnology investors including San Francisco-based accelerator IndieBio and global VC firm SOSV.
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