Dutch biotechnology company Fooditive plans to use its place in the 2026 Grow-NY competition to pursue manufacturing partnerships across Upstate New York and expand its ingredient technology in the United States.
The Rotterdam-based company was selected from 334 applicants representing 49 countries, making it the competition's only European finalist and its only finalist based outside North America, according to a company announcement Wednesday.
Grow-NY is a $3 million food innovation and agriculture competition backed by Empire State Development and Cornell University. The program will conclude Nov. 12 and 13 at the Grow-NY Food and Ag Summit in Rochester, where finalists will compete for investment awards that include a $1 million grand prize.
Company pitches licensing instead of new factories
Fooditive develops precision fermentation and bioconversion technology used to make animal-free casein, the protein associated with cheese's stretch, and a zero-calorie sweetener called 5-KDF.
Rather than build and operate its own production plants, the company licenses its technology to established food and beverage manufacturers with existing infrastructure. Fooditive said 5-KDF is already self-affirmed as generally recognized as safe in the United States, a separate notification is under review by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and partners are producing the ingredient domestically.
Founder and CEO Moayad Abushokhedim said that model would allow the company to scale without the time and expense of building new factories.
“We are not flying to New York to build a factory,” Abushokhedim said. “We are going there to plug into the infrastructure that already exists.”
Fooditive also said it has a multi-year off-take agreement with a global consumer goods company, though the release did not identify the company or disclose the agreement's financial terms.
Accelerator opens doors across Upstate New York
During the next 10 weeks, the Grow-NY accelerator will connect Fooditive with boardrooms and manufacturing facilities across the program's 22-county Upstate New York region. The company said it will use those meetings to seek partners capable of producing and scaling its ingredients for the U.S. market.
That region contains more than 40% of New York's farms, according to the release, and Fooditive said the state's dairy industry makes it a key testing ground for alternatives such as animal-free casein.
Fooditive was founded in 2018 and is headquartered in Rotterdam. The company said the potential Grow-NY investment would support its expansion, but described access to manufacturing partnerships as its primary goal in the competition.
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