The Hackney based bio-dairy company that’s leading the world

Since its inception in 2020, Better Dairy has already become a world leader in bio-dairy research. The aim of the company is to formulate, and make commercially viable, the extraction of casein protein from plants. Better Dairy is one of Happiness Capital’s earliest companies in its UK investment portfolio, and has shown dramatic year on year progress in its business/research aims.

Casein is the protein found largely in cows’ milk and traditionally used in the making of a wide range of dairy products such as cheese and yoghurt. Being an ‘animal based’ protein any dairy products used with such casein, as well as being unsuitable for vegans, also require the support of a substantial dairy farming infrastructure. This, of course, is something that many countries do not have.

CEO, Jevan Nagarajah, explains that hard cheeses are the dairy products that most lend themselves to production using a plant-based casein although other dairy products such as yoghurt and ice cream will also be in the proposed pipelines for the future.  In essence, Better Dairy’s proposition is that a hard cheese made from plant-based casein has the authentic taste of traditionally made cheese, something that out-and-out vegan cheeses lack. 

Better Dairy’s plant-based casein will function in exactly the same way as the animal-based casein giving hard cheese, the same taste and texture as traditionally made hard cheese from cows’ milk.  The key to Better Dairy’s process is precision fermentation, a process that itself will be as much a subject for the forthcoming proof of concept as the actual cheese produced. Aside from the science involved, in terms of commercial viability, the fermentation process also needs to be scalable and reliable enough to bring its current high costs down.

Better Dairy’s advanced research into the commercially viable means of producing plant-based casein derived from plants has a number of wide-ranging advantages for society and individuals alike. Indeed, the many benefits and advantages that Better Dairy’s work will be able to deliver form a major part of the decision of Happiness Capital to invest.

Creating dairy products with plant-based casein whilst maintaining the all-important taste and texture will no doubt delight vegans. But the process goes so much further in its potential ‘Happiness Return. For example, having no reliance on cows means that its production helps to cut greenhouse gases (less cows emitting methane). The process also holds the potential to give countries with no dairy farming infrastructure self-sufficiency in a number of dairy products. It could also be another significant step towards alleviating world food shortages. As well as all this, it also could be a huge export winner for the UK food industry. 

The Better Dairy team is highly technical, with some ten strain-engineering scientists, and several analytics, biology, and dairy scientists. Yet the Company sees itself very much as a dairy company, although one coming from a different perspective.  In the future it sees itself as firmly in the dairy consumables marketplace and is looking forward to the next rounds of funding and scaling for its planned range of animal-free dairy products further down the line.

Better Dairy was founded a few years back in 2020 and started with just £8k to kick itself off. This swiftly rose to a much needed venture capital boost of some (XXXXX exact figure and approval needed). This serious seed capital came via Happiness Capital, a B-Corp accredited investment company and the lead investor in Better Dairy whose directors saw the potential of the product but also of its founder to take the company forward to where it is today. See below

Over the short to mid term, Better Dairy is looking towards meeting Proof of Concept and regulatory rounds for its casein extraction and fermentation process, with the potential for new funding and partnerships to implement and scale production.