Vanilla Vida celebrates “world’s first” large-scale indoor vanilla harvest

By Elaine Watson

Vanilla Vida – an Israeli startup addressing the vast mismatch between supply and demand in the natural vanilla market – has announced its first scaled harvest of vanilla plants grown via an indoor farming system that halves the time from planting to bloom and delivers higher yields of vanillin.

The first beans from Vanilla Vida’s facilities in the north of Israel are being harvested now, with crops from two additional greenhouses run by kibbutzim in central and southern Israel using Vanilla Vida systems and protocols set to deliver harvests in late 2025 and early 2026.

The firm is also working with partners in Uganda to set up curing and growing facilities this year and talking to potential partners in two other geographical regions about setting up growing facilities in the coming years as it seeks to aggressively scale its operations.

The company is not naming the locations yet, but says one is “very familiar with growing vanilla” while the other has not grown vanilla before, but has a “lot of unoccupied greenhouses” that could be suitable for vanilla production.

“This is the first scaled harvest of vanilla from greenhouses in the world,” said CEO Ilanit Bar-Zeev, a former IFF executive who took the helm at Vanilla Vida in September. “No one has grown it at this kind of scale before.”

Precision agriculture

Unlike players producing natural vanillin from bioconversion of ferulic acid from rice bran (which is not the same as vanilla extracts from vanilla plants but can be listed as ‘natural flavor’) Vanilla Vida is growing vanilla planifolia plants indoors in climate-controlled greenhouses. This will add to the world’s supply of vanilla beans, for which demand dramatically exceeds supply.

Vanilla Vida’s plants are not genetically engineered, but thanks to a precisely controlled environment (temperature, humidity) saplings become mature and productive in two years rather than four, while the traditionally six-month-long curing process for the pods can be halved.

Using these methods, yields of vanillin, the primary flavoring component in the crop, are also typically far higher than the average of around 1-2%, said Bar-Zeev. Most of this increase is achieved during the curing process.

“We can convert more than 90% of the glucovanillin [a natural precursor of vanillin found in green vanilla beans] to vanillin, which is above market standard.”

As such, clients getting vanilla from beans cured by Vanilla Vida but grown from vanilla plants grown outdoors by its partners in Uganda, for example, can get vanillin content of above 3%, said Bar-Zeev. This number that could potentially be even higher from beans that are grown using the company’s proprietary indoor growing system.

That said, the consistent quality and custom flavors that Vanilla Vida can deliver is more important to customers than the percentage of vanillin alone, she stressed, noting that modifying the environment during curing can bring out more chocolatey, smoky, or caramel notes for example.

“We also have zero waste, whereas in traditional curing processes, you can get mold,” she added.

Scaling up indoor vanilla production 

Under the agreements with its joint venture partners in Israel, Vanilla Vida supplies young plants to farmers who grow them using its protocols and sell the beans back to Vanilla Vida for curing.

While Vanilla Vida seeks to control the entire value chain, it can add value at each stage, and has also set up a ‘hybrid’ model whereby it sources beans from farmers in Uganda grown from vanilla plants grown outdoors and then cures them in its facilities in Israel, said Bar-Zeev.

“We developed a hybrid solution of importing green vanilla beans from Uganda and implementing our curing technology so we could start to engage with the market before we harvested beans from plants grown in our indoor systems. We did several pilots with flavor and fragrance houses and started to connect with restaurants for brand awareness.

“The next step is setting up our own curing facility in Uganda, as it doesn’t make sense to keep importing beans from there to Israel. We will also work with farmers there to grow vanilla indoors using our protocols, in the same way that we have engaged with farmers in Israel.”

Bar-Zeev added: “We need to offer stability, quality, and price through efficient growing methods, which is why we use precision agriculture methods.

“But having a hybrid model [curing beans from growers in Uganda or elsewhere that are growing plants outdoors] is about risk mitigation in the supply chain. We need to make sure we have diverse alternatives to source green vanilla.”

Stepping back, she added: “We need to engage with partners right across the value chain from growers to flavor houses.”

Investor: Vanilla Vida offers path to ‘stable supply and prices across the value chain’

Backed by investors including Strauss-Group (which owns The Kitchen FoodTech Hub), PeakBridge, Kibbutz Maagan Michael, and Ordway Selections, Vanilla Vida has raised around $15.5m to date.

To scale up, said Bar-Zeev, “There are different [financing] models, for example joint venture partners might share the costs of establishing a growing facility but are not directly investing in Vanilla Vida.” However, Vanilla Vida is also planning “a limited fund raise in the course of the next 12 months to support our scaling activities.”

Right now, consumer goods companies seeking vanilla flavors have several options:

• Vanilla beans/extracts, which come with a hefty price tag but a consumer-friendly label;
• Vanillin from petrochemicals, which dominates the market but is considered an ‘artificial flavor;’
• Vanillin from bioconversion of ferulic acid in rice bran (or other sources) that can be labeled as a ‘natural flavor.’ This market is led by Syensqo (spun out of Solvay), but does not have the same sensory properties as the full extract and typically needs to be further processed by flavor houses.
• Vanillin from cloves to wood pulp to conifers, which may or may not be considered natural depending on how it’s processed and where it’s sold;
• Vanillin produced by genetically engineered baker’s yeast via precision fermentation, which is considered natural in some jurisdictions but not in others. This has not yet been successfully scaled.

Yoni Glickman, a board member at Vanilla Vida and managing partner at FoodSparks, an early stage venture capital fund managed by EIT Food and PeakBridge, said he expected vanilla prices to “continue to be highly volatile, driven by the same structural forces that have shaped cocoa and coffee markets: climate change, supply chain disruptions, and shifting consumer preferences and demand.

“While cocoa and coffee have seen broader geographic diversification, providing somewhat more resilience, total vanilla volume is far smaller and remains heavily concentrated in Madagascar, creating extreme supply sensitivity.”

Against that backdrop, he said, the market opportunity for a company supplying ‘real’ vanilla that can be labeled as such is vast.

“Vanilla is a critical ingredient in a huge amount of food and personal care products encompassing bakery, confectionery, beverage, fragrance and more. While consumers clearly desire natural ingredients, the vanilla space remains largely synthetic. We believe that through combining Vanilla Vida’s technical breakthroughs together with agriculture in traditional geographies, this paradigm can be changed allowing stable supply and prices across the value chain.”

SOURCE: www.agfundernews.com

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