The Trendlines Group (Trendlines) (SGX:42T
) announced that its portfolio company, Celleste Bio, successfully produce the world’s first milk chocolate bars made with real cocoa butter using cell suspension culture technology.
Major multinational snack company, Mondelēz International, used the cocoa butter from Celleste Bio to produce almost 12 chocolate bars that met its product standards.
According to Trendlines, Celleste Bio intends to transform the chocolate market by using AI modelling to tailor cocoa butter for specific melting points and flavour profiles, giving manufacturers a boost in innovation and competitiveness.
Meanwhile, Celleste Bio is developing a resilient supply chain by achieving commercial-scale cocoa butter production in a 1000-liter bioreactor using only a single cocoa bean.
Trendlines claims that this process eliminates the sole dependence on the traditional farming of cocoa trees and supplements production, without replacing it.
“This milestone demonstrates Celleste Bio's cell cultured ingredients are bio-identical to conventionally grown cocoa - meaning they deliver the same texture, melt profile and sensory experience, and sets the stage for scaling production to market-ready quantities in the foreseeable future,” says Haim Brosh, Trendlines’ CEO.
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Shares in Trendlines closed flat at 5.6 cents on April 21.
