Dutch NoPalm Ingredients has secured €5 million in seed funding to scale up the production of sustainable yeast oils as a palm oil alternative.WHO: Founded in 2021 by Lars Langhout and Professor Dr. Jeroen Hugenholtz, NoPalm Ingredients aims to address the environmental and supply chain challenges of conventional palm oil, which is found in 60% of supermarket products. NoPalm Ingredients employs a unique fermentation process using non-GMO yeasts and low-capex technology to convert locally sourced agri-food sidestreams into yeast oils. These oils are a drop-in replacement for palm oil, requiring no recipe reformulation and achieving price parity, with a 90% reduction in CO2 emissions and a 99% decrease in land use compared to traditional palm oil production.WHY: After a pre-seed round in 2022, NoPalm Ingredients has developed an in-house pilot line producing kilograms of oil per batch and completed several pilot projects with industry giants like Colgate-Palmolive, Unilever, and Zeelandia. The team is now gearing up for industrial scale-up trials to deliver hundreds of kilograms of oil for customer testing.IN THEIR OWN WORDS: Lars Langhout, CEO and co-founder of NoPalm Ingredients, said, “Palm oil is cheap, incredibly versatile and widely used in almost every fast-moving consumer good, from your toothpaste to my newborn’s infant formula. The problem is that global demand for palm oil grows by 4% annually, and there’s no strategy to meet the additional 22 million tons needed by 2030 without clearing rainforests 1.5 times the size of Ireland.