Surf & Science: How VAN HEES and BLUU Seafood Are Reimagining the Seafood Counter

Courtesy: Bluu Seafood

As the tide shifts toward more sustainable food systems, one German partnership is betting on hybrid seafood as a bridge between today’s palates and tomorrow’s proteins. In a move that underscores both practicality and long-term vision, spice and ingredient veteran VAN HEES has joined forces with cultivated fish pioneer BLUU Seafood to develop next-generation seafood products combining plant-based ingredients with lab-grown fish cells.

This collaboration, launched earlier this year, reflects a growing recognition that the path to scaling cultivated proteins may lie not in purism, but in pragmatism. Rather than wait for the full infrastructure and cost curve to catch up to consumer demand, both companies are embracing a blended strategy that offers taste, texture, and sustainability—without the long tail of development timelines or steep production costs associated with 100% cell-based formats.

“We see great potential in cultivated fish as part of a sustainable protein supply,” said Robert Becht, Managing Director at VAN HEES. “This cooperation enables us to contribute our innovative strength to a forward-looking segment and actively participate in the transformation of the food system.”

For VAN HEES—a family-run business with nearly 75 years of history across 80 countries—this isn’t a leap into the unknown, but an extension of decades of R&D in flavor engineering, texture optimization, and functional food safety. Already a trusted name in the meat and plant-based sectors, the company is now bringing its food technology know-how into a space where clean-label formulations, regulatory readiness, and consumer experience must all align.

Its work with BLUU Seafood focuses not only on seasoning and flavor masking (often a hurdle with early-stage cultivated proteins), but also on structural elements like fat distribution, moisture retention, and shelf life. The collaboration leans heavily on VAN HEES’ Food.PreTECT competence centre and a long-standing partnership with French flavor specialist Aromatech to ensure the resulting products are stable, palatable, and scalable.

For BLUU Seafood, co-founded by Dr. Sebastian Rakers and Simon Fabich in 2020, the timing is critical. With regulatory filings in process across the US, Singapore, and Europe, the startup has built one of the continent’s most advanced cultivated seafood facilities, including a 2,000-square-meter site in Hamburg featuring bioreactors capable of producing salmon and trout cells at increasing volumes. But like others in the field, BLUU knows that going hybrid may be the smartest on-ramp to real-world impact.

“If the scalability and market conditions are favourable, we will be able to offer cultivated fish at wholesale fish prices in as little as three years,” Rakers said. Initial offerings will include fish balls and fingers—formats that lend themselves to hybrid construction—followed by more structured items like sashimi and fillets.

Hybrid formats are quickly becoming a tactical norm in the cultivated meat industry. From Wildtype’s salmon—served at Portland’s Kann restaurant—to companies developing cultivated fats to enhance plant-based protein blends, the trend reflects a broader industry acknowledgment: partial integration is better than no integration at all. It also aligns with consumer readiness, offering familiar formats without asking for a complete mental leap.

And it’s not just technological feasibility that drives this model—it’s regulatory reality. Europe’s Novel Food approval process remains notoriously slow, prompting companies like BLUU to consider faster-moving jurisdictions such as the UK and Switzerland. The EU has recently floated proposals for a “Biotech Act” aimed at speeding up these pathways, including regulatory sandboxes and AI-driven compliance tools. But until those changes materialize, strategic partnerships like this one offer a faster route to dinner plates.

As the sector waits for the necessary legal green lights, the VAN HEES–BLUU alliance shows how legacy know-how and biotech vision can work hand-in-hand. With a shared focus on sensory experience, safety, and real-world scalability, they’re not just developing a product—they’re crafting a market for a new category of seafood that blends innovation with intention.

In a world where fish stocks are dwindling, ocean ecosystems are under strain, and consumers increasingly demand transparency and sustainability, this hybrid approach could become more than just a technical workaround—it might just be the new normal.