The highly decorated food and beverage group sees sizzling future with carbon-storage provider’s premium beef

EcoBalance Global, a premier provider of carbon storage solutions, and Solutions Leisure Group, an award-winning food and beverage group, announced a deal to bring EcoSmart beef from EcoBalance’s first North Dakota carbon storage concept to Solutions Leisure’s upscale dining experiences in Dubai. 

Over the past three years, EcoBalance Global developed a technology-driven Framework that leverages grazing animals to restore grasslands and store more carbon. They have raised over 900 head of cattle using the Soil Carbon Sequestration and Storage Framework. The Framework utilizes regenerative grazing as a key tenant of the overall program, which is a practice that repairs, rebuilds, revitalizes and restores ecosystem function. That project generated 4,364 carbon credits on the BCarbon registry, that were partially used to inset against the carbon generated by the cattle and ranching operations.  

“We’ve worked hard to create a solution that is part of the carbon storage puzzle creating a premium product that consumers are calling for. EcoBalance Global has managed to produce cattle that not only offset their own existence, but to raise them in a way that enhances the biodiversity of the grasslands they’re grazed on, storing more carbon than that land would capture on its own. We can’t wait to deliver this first round of beef to Robert and the team at Solutions Leisure Group and see the impact come full circle,” said Tellan Steffan, CEO of EcoBalance Global. 

Solutions Leisure Group owns and operates 20 premier destinations in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Their goal is to make the magical a part of every day, and they have a reputation for epic experiences. In 2023, they marked their 10-year anniversary in the Middle East, but have over 20 years of experience in the international hospitality industry. 

“After our first decade in the Middle East, we’re humbled and excited to bring this new product with a net positive from EcoBalance Global to the market. We create moments people live for, and to be able to let them feel good about their impact on the environment when they order a meal with premium EcoSmart beef is a new opportunity we jumped on,” said Robert Rathbone, Partner and Culinary Director with Solutions Leisure Group. 

Neither EcoBalance Global nor Solutions Leisure Group is satisfied with the status quo. Both groups are constantly improving their product and process. EcoBalance leverages advanced technology and satellite data in conjunction with physical measurements, and digital animal tracking to exceed the rigorous requirements of the carbon registries – and ties it all together with an end-to-end proprietary software platform complete with blockchain tracking; providing transparency and legitimacy to every step of the process.

“We’re doing things bigger in 2024, with a quality product that has a positive environmental benefit. I’m looking forward to working with this US-produced EcoSmart beef from EcoBalance Global and providing an excellent experience for our guests,” Rathbone continued. 

Connecting the beef from North Dakota with the entertainment group in Dubai is Hope Gourmet Foodstuff Trading, LLC. 

“While beef is not a new product for us, we’ve never worked with a product that has quite the backstory as the EcoSmart beef from EcoBalance Global. We’re excited to distribute a product that has benefitted the land it was produced on, storing carbon from the atmosphere and offsetting the carbon used to develop it. It’s a new standard that we’re happy to connect with the end markets across the Middle East that are demanding more environmentally-friendly food,” said Manoj Israni, Managing Partner at Hope Gourmet Foodstuff Trading, who is the exclusive distributor of EcoBalance’s beef to Dubai. 

The beef coming from North Dakota is just the first that EcoBalance Global is producing. They are expanding the Framework program in a new partnership with KazBeef and rTek to replicate the excellent results of the North Dakota project on 100,000 acres in Kazakhstan. The announcement was made at COP28 in Dubai on December 5, 2023. This pilot project is expected to demonstrate the first carbon inset beef supply chain outside the US. It is scalable, with the goal of using EcoBalance’s Framework as a global standard for sustainable and climate smart protein supply.