real strength lies in our close links with the mushroom industry and our producers, from local to New Zealand.” Producing mushroom spawn fits in that strategy. In September, the news arrived that Ecovative had sold its Dutch spawn production plant, which had only been acquired by the American startup in 2022, to the Klerken family.
Lambert and Ecovative Ies briefly traced the history of the spawn factory in Venlo, which now, with him as managing director, has changed hands for the second time. “It began, of course, with importing Lambert spawn into Europe, and for various reasons, it made sense for Lambert to establish a spawn factory in Europe. In 2019, we launched as Lambert Spawn Europe under American management. However the market response was more hesitant than expected, sales volumes were somewhat disappointing, the ingredients for their purely synthetic speed spawn were difficult to source here, investment was insufficient and the costs were higher than anticipated.”
Lambert Spawn Europe had already been working with Ecovative for some time. They acquired the spawn factory in 2022 with the aim of reducing their reliance on external spawn suppliers by vertically integrating spawn production and driving their own strong growth. The excellent Dutch infrastructure, know-how, Agaricus growers, who could possibly switch to using their spawn and Lambert’s flexible blender were all factors that appealed to the American startup. “Ecovative was strong in sustainable applications of mycelium and attracted many investors but lacked a link in their process chain: spawn production. They envisioned strong, rapid growth in this area, but startups always have a positive mindset. An added issue was the challenges facing the capital market. Lambert probably took an over conservative approach, whereas Ecovative is highly innovative, but less focused on mushrooms.” Ecovative now appears to be concentrating more on mycelium-based food in the US, such as‘ MyBacon’, but this has not yet been approved for the European market. Meanwhile,
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