Li Ka-shing spent billions of dollars intended to reshape the food chain

Li Ka-shing, 84, is building the future he wants. On the one hand, in the past two years, both his son and his son have sold many mainland properties, sold part of Watson's stake and sold nearly 100 billion worth of assets such as the Asian container terminal. On the other hand, on June 18, A big step forward, Victoria Harbor, a subsidiary of the Li Ka Shing Foundation, has invested $ 10 million into ModernMeadow, a technology company in New York City, USA, to develop and cultivate cells and use technologies such as leather and beef in 3D printing.

Just two weeks earlier, Li Ka-shing also personally show fried in Guangdong, "artificial eggs", pushing the food. At present, this artificial mayonnaise has become a new store in the PARKnSHOP store. At the beginning of the year, Victoria Harbor Capital led the $ 23 million investment in the merchandise maker Hampton Creek.

Avant-garde investment in "artificial eggs" and "printing of leather and beef" made Li Ka-shing a real "superman." In fact, Li Ka-shing has invested more than 60 privately-owned technology companies and "technology has made me feel rejuvenated." In a public interview, the old man came up with a source of impulses on high-tech investment.

Business ideas for artificial eggs

"The sauces of artificial eggs have the same taste as genuine sand chuensu sauce. When they are used for making cakes, they are no different from real eggs. I believe artificial eggs will certainly be delicious in the future." In May this year, Li Ka-shing and the producer of artificial eggs Hampton Creek recommended the so-called "JustMayo" man-made mayonnaise at a technology roadshow in Guangdong.

June 13, "JustMayo" was first officially sold at the Great Supermarkets Admiralty Store, which is owned by Li Ka Shing, and has a total of four flavors. Each bottle costs HK $ 23.

"At present, JustMayo also belongs to the products of Pokka Sole Agent, the first to be sold in Pokka Hong Kong." Pokka Supermarkets Public Utilities Department said to 21st Century Business Herald: "If the sales are good, the mainland Pokka will introduce it vigorously. "

Earlier, producer Hampton Creek has made market recommendations in several cities across China, including Guangzhou and Beijing. However, the major outlets of PARKnSHOP in Hong Kong and southern China (mainly Guangdong), therefore, JustMayo to achieve national sales, but also need to enter the other brands of supermarkets.

According to Josh Tetrick, founder of Hampton Creek, the nutritional value of artificial eggs is one-quarter more nutritious than that of market eggs and is free of gluten and cholesterol for longer, but at a price of only about half the egg, The U.S. price is $ 2.99.

According to 21st Century Business Herald reporter on the Hampton Creek official website, this plant called "plant egg" in the United States is made from a mixture of easily grown plants such as peas, sorghum and sunflower seeds, , Nutritional value and cooking characteristics similar to ordinary eggs powder, eggs can be prepared instead of food.

In early 2012, the project received the attention and support of Bill Gates and Paypal founder Tony Blair. Gates also became an advisor to the company and advertised for artificial egg products in Silicon Valley.

Last September, the plant egg, Beyond Eggs, went on sale at a Whole Foods supermarket in California and earned $ 1 million in the first month of listing. Josh Tetrick was then expected to get shelves in the world soon.

Currently, Hampton Creek has negotiated with food manufacturers around the world, hoping their plant eggs will replace real eggs used in supermarket products. The company has created a perfect egg substitute, suitable for making noodles, and the other for making cakes.

"We can make great milk nibbling, and we consistently beat our opponents with taste tests on leading products in the market," said Josh Tetrick. "And in terms of biscuits, we get Bill Gates Tz, Blair and others taste, they both can not eat the difference.

In February of this year, Li Ka-shing and Yahoo founder Jerry Yang invested $ 23 million in venture capital firm Hampton Creek Foods through a venture capital fund. Artificial eggs from here towards the Asian business door.

"The company is investigating and communicating with undergraduates in mainland China and post-1980 consumer groups, hoping to understand the taste preferences and consumer needs of Chinese young people in order to find out the direction and scale of marketing for the upcoming launch of the Frozen Add-on-Cookie Products Ready, "Josh Tetrick said.

Josh Tetrick believes consumers in Mainland China are highly sensitive to food safety and non-GMO foods and will become the two most important defensive lines for artificial eggs to overcome mainland consumers.

Print beef

For investor Li Ka-shing, artificial eggs are just one of his pawns to build the future. In May this year, the Science and Technology Exhibition jointly organized by Guoyan Information Technology Co., Ltd. and Li Ka Shing Foundation introduced a total of seven scientific and technological innovation projects. In addition to artificial eggs, there were also cancer medical screening technologies, crop genetic optimization, Wastewater treatment, biodegradable packaging, LED lights and "Big Data" applications.

Zhou Kaixuan, director of the Li Ka Shing Foundation, said that Li Ka-shing has always wanted to make Hong Kong, Singapore and other gold-size areas of the economy through technological advances. The technology of artificial eggs is an example. In addition, he has been hoping to study whether stem cells The technology of producing leather, and the plant technology capable of producing meat, enable the production of inch-size gold such as Hong Kong leather to surpass that of South America and meat production beyond the Americas.

On June 18, Victoria Harbor Capital injected $ 10 million into ModernMeadow, opening Li Ka Shing's ideal for high-tech leather and meat production.

This is a crazy idea: ModernMeadow uses a 3D printer to pellet cell masses into a biological tissue model. Cell pellets melt after printing, just as cells develop in embryos to grow meat and leather.

Enter Gabor and Andras Forgacs, two partners of Modern Meadow, won research-based funding for research projects funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's extremely advantageous allowances, including Peter Thiel's Breakout Labs .

"A total of $ 2 million is being funded by Modern Meadow and these allowances are very quickly approved and awarded to us." Gabor said, "This funding will allow them to complete their prototypes and be able to compete with small business innovation research institutes The next phase of funding. "

The use of meat and leather for these cultivated livestock, at this stage, is mainly supplied to fashion designers and producers of leather products to meet the growing global demand for the products manufactured by these manufacturers.

The global trade in leather amounts to 60 billion U.S. dollars each year. The benefits of leather production are in line with Li Ka-shing's business concept. Large manufacturers, fashion accessories designers and even automobile manufacturers benefit from this more efficient Leather supply chain.

With Li Ka-shing's investment funds, Modern Meadow aims to produce a certain amount of production and integrate the leather into garments and accessories this year and then gradually scale up.

The vision of Modern Meadow is to use 3D regeneration technology to produce meat that meets USDA standards for human consumption. The company predicts that because "bio-ink" (which is the meat that makes up the meat) is a mixture of different types of cells, materials can be formed using 3D printing and processed in a bioreactor that can be printed during the prototyping phase 2cm × 1cm × 0.5mm square piece of meat.

Modern Meadow believes that bio-printing of meat not only to meet the human needs of animal protein, the environment is also more friendly.

Reconstruct the food chain

"For the consumer, artificial leather can have less environmental impact and do not have to worry about issues such as animal rights protection." Gabor said in his product introduction on the official website, "Livestock industry releases half of all greenhouse gases from human activities And animal husbandry also occupies one-third of the non-frozen land available on the planet, combining 3D printing with bio-tissue engineering to print livestock products that meet the human needs of consuming 300 million tonnes of meat products annually and Deal with the biggest problem on this planet. "

However, Gabor believes that meat products are a long-term project and require more financial support. With Li Ka-shing's investment in Victoria Harbor, the financial strength is not a problem. "In many loss-making start-ups, Li Ka-shing's investments are seen as a major source of confidence." An industry investment fund manager in Hong Kong said "Victoria Harbor's investments are not usually eager to talk about project returns, The development process, Victoria Harbor Investment should have a very high exit rate of return.

Over the past years, Victoria Harbor has invested heavily in information technology. The tech start-ups such as Skype, Facebook, Spotify, Waze, Siri, DeepMind and Summly have all received funding support from Victoria Harbor in their initial stages.

This time Li Ka-shing is playing a big move. "Li Jiacheng's interest in science and technology is extending from information to the biological world, the difference between the two major areas of science and technology is a concern for human lifestyles, a concern for human survival." The above industry investment manager said, "If the artificial eggs and printed meat Really into the mass consumer market, to some extent, humans will rebuild their own food chain.

Josh Tetrick has said publicly: "We're going to strip animals out of formulas. The food industry is a broken industry and there is an urgent need for innovation, especially when it comes to animals."

However, the source believes that raw materials for artificial eggs come from easy-to-grow plants and that 3D-printed meat raw materials originate from stem cells. The survival of such food depends on thousands of thousands of years of humankind's life and can be changed to another dependent It is hard to say that human beings accept it.

Li Ka-shing is confident about future technology changes in human food production. According to public information, in addition to the two food manufacturers mentioned above, Li Ka-shing has also invested in an Israeli company, Kaiima, which has developed a new agricultural technology using the same Water, the same soil, agricultural output can be increased by 30%, and did not use transgenic technology.

After investing in Kaiima, Li Ka-shing once wanted to commercialize Kaiima's agricultural technology in China, but the reasons for that were ultimately unsuccessful.

Fan Zhihong, an associate professor of food science at China Agricultural University, seems to take a long time to persuade consumers to accept these non-natural meat and eggs. "The current data is not enough to prove that 'artificial egg' nutrients and a variety of industrial uses can completely replace eggs, nutrition is not an indicator can be evaluated, for example, high protein content does not mean that all nutrients are high.In addition, Egg unique nutrients, such as lecithin, artificial eggs have not yet know whether to contain.

Fan Zhihong believes that in the food industry, eggs have a unique taste and put on the unique features of food, artificial eggs may not be able to completely replace.