Meat+Poultry - September 2023 - 17

R
epresenting his company SuperGround,
Santtu Vekkeli joined 10 other
sustainability-focused startups at the
second annual Tyson Foods Demo Day. Vekkeli
applied for the international competition on a
whim, not knowing how far he would go.
After narrowing down applicants across
15 different countries, Tyson selected the
Helsinki, Finland-based startup, SuperGround,
as one of the 11 entrepreneurs to pitch their
concept to judges at its headquarters in
Springdale, Ark., on July 11.
Vekkeli traveled halfway across the world
not only for a chance to work with one of the
top US-based meat companies, but also for
the possibility of taking his culture-changing
concept worldwide.
DEMO DAY
The day of the event was intense, Vekkeli
said, with a rigorous schedule that included
back-to-back socializing and networking,
demonstrations and interviews.
The competitors weren't the only ones
who came prepared. Tyson executives did
their homework too. They came into the
sessions with direct and poignant questions for
the startups.
SuperGround had a strategy walking into
those meetings - to keep things simple. But
it turns out that keeping things simple isn't
so easy.
" It's always hard to keep things simple
when you've been working every day for
many years on something, and then you try to
compress it into 10 minutes, " Vekkeli said.
Nonetheless, the strategy paid off. Tyson
named SuperGround one of the top four
companies that would receive a mentorship
opportunity from Tyson and a chance at future
collaborations with the processor.
The very next day, SuperGround got
that opportunity.
" I've been working in the food system
in the US for quite some time, and I've been
consulting from Finland for projects that have
happened in the US, " Vekkeli noted. " But
this was very nice, like looking from another
direction, from the point of view of Tyson.
" They were showing and telling us so
much - such interesting data - that I'm very
glad to have been selected. They were very
open and extremely interested in learning and
extremely interested in sharing with us, which
was great because sometimes companies are
very secretive about everything. But it's hard to
learn if you don't tell anything. "
DOWN TO THE BONE
What set SuperGround apart from the other
competitors was how its technology directly
impacts traditional meat processing.
" In food startups, there are a lot of different
companies, and very few of them are actually
working in the traditional meat industry, "
Vekkeli explained. " And if they're working in
the traditional meat industry, they usually have
some sort of software that is making something
easier. Or then they quite often have medicine
or some sort of animal health thing - super
high tech. Traditional meat industry processing
technology is actually super rare for a startup,
and I have to say that makes us unique. "
SuperGround uses multifaceted machinery
to convert hard tissues like poultry bones
into a smooth, nutritional paste that can be
incorporated into traditional foods such as
chicken, fish or sausage.
" It's kind of a paste with a lot of collagen, so
it's easy to kind of glue it to almost any other
recipe, " Vekkeli said.
Hard tissues carry roughly the same
nutritional value as muscle itself. Bone has
about 15% protein, while muscle has 15-20%.
By adding the paste to proteins, the nutritional
value remains steady.
Not only does the paste have the same
nutritional benefits as muscles, but it also
packs rich, meaty flavor.
" The good thing here is that when we
produce the paste out of it, basically it has a
taste profile of a bone broth, " Vekkeli said. " It
is technically a bone broth. "
He continued, " We're using hard tissues
such as bones. We make them soft, and more
or less the same actually happens when you're
making a bone broth. You are removing the
protein from the bone, the outside of the bone
structure, and the bone itself, with only the
calcium phosphates, is actually pretty soft. So,
when you have the soft bone, it's pretty easy
to grind the bone and make a super smooth
structure, and then that paste has a taste
profile of meat broth. "
Aistila, a subfunction of the University of
Turku in Turku, Finland, put SuperGround's
www.meatpoultry.com | 09.23 | MEAT+POULTRY
17
" Traditional
meat
industry
processing
technology
is actually
super rare
for a startup,
and I have
to say that
makes us
unique. "
- SANTTU VEKKELI
Minna Vauhkonen
http://www.meatpoultry.com
Meat+Poultry - September 2023

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Meat+Poultry - September 2023
