Yali Bio Exhibits its Cocoa-Free Butter for Confectionery at the Bezos Centre Scientific Kick-Off Event

(Chunks of Cocoa Butter Equivalent produced by the Company’s proprietary fermentation, Photo Credit: Yali Bio)

Jan 27, 2025

At the Scientific Kick-off Event hosted by the Bezos Centre for Sustainable Protein at Imperial College London last Monday and Tuesday, the California based food technology startup exhibited its new product line, a cocoa-butter equivalent developed by its designer-fats fermentation technology.

Cocoa supply constraint has been hitting the news in 2024, attributed to climate change and El Niño hurts crops in West Africa (the region accounts for 70% of global production), and deep-rooted structural issues at play, based on a JP Morgan Global Research studies published in December last year.  The same month, Cocoa price reached an all time historical high at $12,646 per ton.  Earlier this month, such structural supply-demand imbalance led Jefferries to adjust Mondelez International's stock rating from Buy to Hold and reduced the price target to $62 from $75 (Mondelez is the world’s largest confectionery company, ahead of Mars, Ferrero, Hershey, among others).

According to Yulin Lu, Ph.D., the Co-founder & CEO of Yali Bio, the company has been spending the last 12 months developing a precision fermentation based alternative to cocoa butter, recognizing the cocoa supply imbalance issue that was previously only familiar to the cocoa and chocolate industry insiders. “Our team’s ability to rapidly develop the yeast genetics traits, and a scalable fermentation and downstream process into a food-grade cocoa butter equivalent is proven by our speed to prototype”, Lu explains, “we leverage our knowledge in our soft butterfat line, and made triglycerides composition comparable to cocoa butter, which is a hard butter with a uniquely sharp melting curve.”

(Cocoa butter callets produced by the Company’s proprietary fermentation, Photo Credit: Yali Bio)

In its R&D laboratory located in South San Francisco with scientists in white lab coats, the company produced the cocoa butter equivalent, and has tested it in different formats such as callets and a block of prototype chocolate.  When asked about how to name the cocoa butter equivalent that is not produced by Cacao trees, Lu laughed and said: “We cannot call it cocoa butter for obvious reason, we call it S.O.S butter, part is of course, the unique chemistry behind the fatty acids arrangement in its structure, and more so, it is timely to urge a much needed change and attention to cocoa supply and our climate crisis, it is S.O.S. time!”

(Chocolate prototype made with cocoa-free butter produced by the Company’s proprietary fermentation, Photo Credit: Yali Bio)

The company is in the process of a regulatory preparation for GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe), and starts an RFP process to engage with chocolate manufacturers to scale and distribute the S.O.S butter into the confectionery market.  The global chocolate market is $130 billion, while cocoa butter accounts for $5 billion, and emerging technology companies in food and biotechnology have started making noise in the nascent alt chocolate landscape.