What is the status of the company’s operations right now, and when do you expect we can see Solein on the market?

Solar Foods began operating its first commercial-scale production facility, Factory 01, in April 2024. The factory is located in Finland, just ten minutes from the Helsinki airport and half an hour from the Helsinki city center. We estimate Factory 01 will be able to grow a maximum of 160 tons of Solein® annually, scaling up our output a hundred-fold and taking the novel protein’s production to commercial levels.

Solein received its first novel food regulatory approval in September 2022 in Singapore from the Singapore Food Agency (SFA). This allows for the test marketing and sale of food products containing Solein in Singapore. Solein has already been introduced there in food products in limited editions, such as the Solein Chocolate Gelato, Fazer’s Taste the Future snack bar and most recently, Atlr.72™ Flowering Mooncakes and Atlr.72™ Ice Cream Sandwiches, by the Japanese food company the Ajinomoto Group.

Solar Foods obtained self-affirmed GRAS (Generally Recognized As Safe) status for Solein in the United States in September 2024. Solar Foods was able to begin commercial activities in the United States, the second market in the world where Solein can be sold, and Solein was launched in New York in November 2024 in partnership with the restaurant Olmsted in Brooklyn. Solar Foods has filed for novel food dossier for Solein in other key markets such as the EU and UK.

Our next aim is ramping up Solein production with Factory 01. We expect this will also give us a great deal of data and insight into how the production process scales, all information that we can use in upcoming facilities that will scale up production further.

As for the next novel food regulatory approvals, local agencies work in different ways in each market; this means we cannot say with certainty which one will grant the next approval for Solein.