New joint venture takes Perfect Day a step closer to cow-free milk

• Perfect Day partners with ADM to commercialise milk without cows
• Partnership aims to create the world’s first animal-free dairy protein

San Francisco-based Perfect Day, a significant holding of CPT Capital, is partnering with agricultural processor and ingredient giant Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), to supply the world’s first animal-free dairy protein.

The ingredient will be produced through a fermentation process, creating the same dairy proteins you would find in an ordinary glass of milk. It takes the quest to make cow-free milk a significant step further forward.

How is animal-free milk created?

The process works by taking a bovine DNA sequence, printing it using a 3D printer, and inserting it into a specific part of a strain of yeast. The yeast ferments sugar to make real milk proteins (casein and whey), which are then combined with plant-based fats and nutrients to produce milk.

This is a safe and proven fermentation technique, similar to that used in the food industry for decades to produce many common food components like vitamins, probiotics, enzymes, and natural flavors.

While Perfect Day have pioneered this process to produce the dairy proteins, ADM’s expertise in large scale fermentation gives them the infrastructure and large scale assets to scale up Perfect Day’s process.

What are the benefits?

Plant milks have flooded the market in recent years, with sales increasing by 61% in the last five years in the US alone. However, despite their popularity, most dairy-free alternatives do not consistently match the flavour and functionality of cow’s milk.

Perfect Day and ADM believe that more people will be encouraged to go dairy-free if they can create a product that has a similar taste and nutritional profile to real milk, while being lactose-free, hormone-free, antibiotic-free, gluten-free, and cholesterol-free.

The high-purity protein will have a wide range of other food and drink applications, too.

Most milk alternatives do not perform in the same way as real milk when used as an ingredient. Cheese made from soy, for example, doesn’t experience coagulation, where the proteins physically bond to each other, delivering the complex flavours and textures we’ve come to expect. Perfect Day and ADM’s protein will have the same chemical composition as cow’s milk, so brands will be able to make our favourite foods in a kinder, greener, and more delicious way.

Why enter the market now?

A combination of methane-emitting cows, poor land use, and vast water consumption, means the environmental risk facing the dairy industry is hugely significant. But finding a worthy, tasty, and nutritional alternative to milk isn’t easy.

Perfect Day and ADM’s new animal-free dairy protein answers environmental and animal welfare concerns without sacrificing the flavour and consistency of real milk.