Donaldson, best known as an industrial filters maker, has made a big bet on life sciences to diversify the company. In turn, some of its new projects are very different than before — for example the development of bio-engineered salmon.
A year ago, Bloomington-based Donaldson acquired Solaris Biotechnology, a 30-employee Italian company that makes bioprocessing equipment from benchtop testing devices to large-scale systems used for production in the food and beverage, biotechnology and life sciences markets.
Now Solaris which has an office in Berkeley, Calif. has partnered with Wildtype — a San Francisco-based company that is developing a new source of sustainable seafood that can meet a growing global demand for seafood.
Earlier this year, Wildtype raised $100 million in venture funding to help get closer to production. Investors included celebrities such as Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert Downey Jr., Bezos Expeditions and Minnetonka-based Cargill.
They are all betting consumers would be willing to switch to an end product that looks like a filet of salmon. Grown in a bioreactor, the cells contain genetic material from wild fish. The plus, advocates say, is that the products are free of parasites, mercury, microplastics, antibiotics and other pollutants.
While some wild fisheries are being sustainably managed, wild fish stocks in general are being increasingly depleted to meet the world's growing hunger for seafood. Wildtype says that world seafood consumption is expected to increase 23 million tons annually by 2030.
Remaining wild fish are also at risk from the growing amount of microplastics and pollutants in the oceans. Farm-raised salmon and other species can meet some of the increasing demand but aquaculture can come with its own set of problems caused by overcrowded conditions.
"This is the first step to use Solaris' position in the food and beverage industry to expand into a growing market of alternative proteins," wrote Brian Drab, an analyst with William Blair who covers Donaldson.
