Investment Climate Podcast: Ori Cohavi and Yochai Maytal of Remilk Share How They Created Real Dairy Without Cows
In this podcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2025 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.
Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. This podcast is syndicated through our media partners, Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.
Episode 57: Remilk
In this episode, I sit down with Remilk Co-Founder & CTO Ori Cohavi and Upstream Bioprocess Lead Yochai Maytal for the most honest, behind-the-scenes deep dive yet into their groundbreaking cow-free dairy launch with Gad Dairies. We break down the blind taste tests (including my own), why their milk froths, cooks, and tastes indistinguishably from traditional dairy, how they achieved positive gross margins at industrial scale, and the strategic JV model that’s letting them enter the market differently from any other precision-fermentation company. We also dig into past challenges, the truth behind the board shake-up, global expansion strategy, the path to competing with subsidized dairy, and what it will take for Remilk to reshape the global dairy industry.
Key Facts Remilk:
- Goal: To create real dairy without a single cow, bringing a message of hope and joy to our planet, our body… and cows!
- Alex’s Top Findings:
- 75% Less Sugar, Same Experience. By removing lactose, Remilk eliminates the natural milk sugar that quietly adds 5% sugar to every glass. They replace it with a much smaller amount of “table sugar,” leveraging its higher sweetness to keep the sensory profile while cutting total sugar by 75%. The result is a product that tastes like regular milk, with a similar sweetness perception but far less sugar load. This gives them a strong “better for you” angle without asking consumers to sacrifice taste. ” It’s actually very similar to the level of sweetness of milk, but it has 75% less sugar. We do not use any lactose in the product. You can put in a quarter of the amount [of sugar] and get the same experience.”
- The JV Model: Tech & Brand as Equal Partners. Rather than just selling ingredients, Remilk built a full joint venture with Gad, one of Israel’s premium dairy brands (~₪1B+ business). Remilk brings the protein, formulations, and process know-how; Gad brings market knowledge, brand trust, and distribution. “ We are responsible for the technology, for supplying the end products, and Gad is mostly responsible for the marketing efforts for the distribution. But I think what we are doing is much more than co-branding, so it’s much more than being an intel inside or remake inside. When I look at a partnership with Gad and why I think it’s going to work, it’s because each side brings its strength and each one is complemented by the other in its weaknesses.”
- Already Positive Gross Margins (Atypical in Food Tech). Unlike most novel food companies that subsidize early sales, Remilk says it wouldn’t launch if it weren’t already gross-margin positive. Milk is the hardest product economically, but they balance it with other higher-margin products in the portfolio. They emphasize that they waited until both taste and unit economics reached a minimum bar before going to market, and that they’ve made major efficiency gains in strain performance and process design. “ We are able to reach this positive margin, not only because of milk, which is really the hardest product to reach, but also because we are going to launch other products with a very good margin that actually support the whole package that we are going to launch. But we are already at the point where we are positive. Otherwise, we would not go into the market. We made a huge breakthrough in the efficiency of the strain and the ability to scale up.”
- Link to Apple Podcast here.
- Catch the full podcast series here.
israeltrade.org.au 