Days after settling a long-running lawsuit with Impossible Foods, Motif FoodWorks, a developer of plant-based meat analogues, reportedly is shutting down.
The foodtech firm told its staff it was closing, according to a report by AgFunderNews. A skeleton crew will wind things down at the Boston headquarters and its research center in nearby Northborough, Mass.
Motif had been engaged in a costly intellectual property battle with Impossible Foods that was resolved last week with both parties agreeing to cover their own costs. And that may have been the last straw – the legal costs were significant and now unrecoverable, and business-to-business sales already were impeded by fear of buying ingredients from a company being sued by a major competitor.
Motif had raised $345 million in investments since it 2019 separation from Ginkgo Bioworks, according to AgFunderNews. Its plant-based beef, pork and chicken products were based on its self-developed ingredient Hemami, “a heme protein that provides a rich meaty flavor and aroma to plant-based meat alternatives,” according to the company website.
Despite Hemami being based on bovine myoglobin, Impossible Foods thought the ingredient infringed on its patents for Impossible’s soy leghemoglobin, and Impossible filed the IP lawsuit in early 2022. In last week’s settlement, in which both parties agreed to pay their own legal bills, it was also stated that Impossible Foods will take over Motif’s heme-related business – without explanation of what that meant.
