This year has been a difficult year for large-scale cultured meat production programs. In May 2022, another California startup, Eat Just, announced plans to build up to 10 large bioreactors, each with a capacity of 250,000 liters, in collaboration with bioreactor company ABEC. That agreement fell apart, and ABEC later filed an amended legal complaint in federal court claiming more than $61 million in unpaid invoices.
Chow says that when large amounts of capital are lacking, companies find themselves in a chicken-and-egg situation. Cultured meat remains much more expensive than conventional meat, so investors want to see evidence that startups can reduce costs before moving into large-scale factories. However, it may be difficult for startups to prove that they can grow meat on a large scale without a large-scale factory.
Chau said more companies would scale up “in stages” to demonstrate scalable production in progressively larger facilities rather than immediately moving to very large meat plants. I predict that it will be.
This appears to be an approach that Upside is taking to shift its focus back to its Emeryville plant rather than its Illinois facility. In his email, Valeti told staff that the Emeryville expansion facility will have similar production capacity and potential commercial start date as the initial stage of the Illinois plant.
“The cost of doing this would be significantly less than building the first stage of Rubicon,” Valeti wrote. “Our focus and execution will be aided by leveraging our team, learning and existing infrastructure. [the Emeryville facility]. Co-location with other members of the team also allows for more efficient technology transfer. ”
Steve Molino, an investor at sustainable food venture capital firm Clear Current Capital, praised Upside’s decision to exit the Illinois plant and focus instead on Emeryville. “This is something every company should do,” he says. “You should try to make the most of what you have before you make these big capital investments and big investments.”
Upside’s Emeryville facility, which opened in November 2021, is nicknamed Epic, which stands for Engineering, Production and Innovation Center. At the time of its release, the company Future capacity will exceed 400,000 people Pounds of cultured meat per year. In September 2023, a WIRED investigation found that Upside’s textured chicken fillets, which until recently were served at a series of monthly dinners at Bar Crenn in San Francisco, were not made in Epic’s large bioreactor. It has become clear that the products were not manufactured in the United States and were produced on a very small scale. It comes in a 2 liter roller bottle.
Although the funding environment for cultured meat companies remains unstable, there are some signs that the industry is slowly making progress. In January, Israel became the third country to grant regulatory approval. cultured meat. In December 2023, Australia and New Zealand’s common food safety regulator began the approval process for start-up company Vow’s meat grown from cultured quail cells.
But the technology has drawn pushback from lawmakers. florida and arizona, a bill has been introduced that, if passed, would ban the sale of cultured meat. The move in the United States follows a vote by the Italian parliament: ban on cultured meat The product is sold domestically, even though it is not sold anywhere in the EU. “Critics are trying to write our obituary and ban our industry in its infancy,” Valeti wrote in an email to staff.
With the industry still in its infancy and venture capital funding tight, Molino welcomes a more gradual approach to scaling cultured meat, rather than making big bets on vast meat-brewing plants. ing. “I think this is great news for the upside and for the universe,” he says. “It just seems more logical and rational and well planned and thought out.”
