Cultivated Seafood

Prolific Cultured Meat

©Prolific Machines

Prolific Machines Reveals $42M Series A to Scale ‘Assembly Line’ Tech for Cultivated Meat

Cultivated meat startup Profilic Machines has emerged from stealth mode to announce a $42M Series A raise led by investor Arvind Gupta and the Bill Gates-founded Breakthrough Energy Ventures. After raising the round a year ago, it is now opening a 25,000 sq. ft. facility in Emeryville, CA to expand its “fundamentally new approach” to cultivated fish, poultry and beef.  Unlike most cultivated meat companies, Prolific says it is focused on inventing a scalable manufacturing process first, followed by a product, in order to create the necessary infrastructure that can cost-compete with factory farming. As Henry Ford revolutionized automobile manufacturing by efficiently assembling cars, Prolific says it is inventing breakthrough technology to help cultivated meat reach the mass market.  Reducing costs Prolific was founded by …

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cultivated fish ball laksa

© Umami Meats

Umami Meats Reveals “World’s First” Cultivated Fish Ball Laksa

Singaporean alt-seafood startup Umami Meats has unveiled what it claims is the world’s first cultivated fish ball laksa (a spicy noodle dish). The fish balls are made by combining Umami’s cultivated seafood with plant proteins. This improves mouthfeel and helps to bind the balls together. Umami has received an administrative exemption from regulators at the Singapore Food Agency, which will allow it to serve the cultivated fish balls during Feed 9B Singapore Restaurant Week. Umami’s technology uses stem cells to develop cultivated fish muscle, fat, and connective tissue. The company is focusing on the species that are most threatened by climate change and overfishing, such as Japanese eel, yellowfin tuna, and red snapper. Funding In March, Umami raised $2.4 million in a pre-seed round co-led …

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Cultivated scallops

© Mermade Seafoods

Israel’s Mermade Raises $3.3M for Cultivated Scallops

Israel’s Mermade has closed an oversubscribed seed funding round, with investors including OurCrowd, Fall Line, and Sake Bosch. Mermade is a startup developing what it claims are the world’s first cultivated scallops. What sets the company apart is that it is using aquaponics, a circular process that allows it to cut costs and improve sustainability compared to other cultivated meat and seafood producers. The technology uses algae to recycle spent growth medium, a byproduct of the cell cultivation process. Mermade intends to use the funding to hire stem cell and algae researchers, with the goal of producing its scallops on a laboratory scale by 2023. The startup is one of many alt-seafood producers to find success with investors in 2022 — figures show that the …

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Bluu Seafood_Cultivated Fish Fingers on a plate_copyright Bluu GmbH_Wim Jansen

Cultivated Fish Fingers, image copyright Bluu GmbH / Wim Jansen

Bluu Seafood Announces Europe’s First Cultivated Seafood is Market-Ready

Germany’s Bluu Seafood has presented its first market‐ready products made from cultivated fish cells, positioned as Europe’s first cultivated seafood products. The company states the alt seafood products will soon be ready to enter the regulatory approval process across its target markets. Bluu Seafood is concentrating on goods manufactured from fish cells that are developed in specialist facilities, based on the notion that conventional seafood production is nearing its limitations. Compared to cultivated meat, cultivated seafood has a less complicated structural makeup and is more temperature-tolerant, allowing for easier upscaling. Europe’s first cultivated seafood Founded two years ago, Bluu Seafood now becomes Europe’s first cultivated seafood startup to present market-ready cultivated seafood products. The first cell-based products developed by the startup are cultivated fish fingers …

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Wildtype Sushi

Cultivated salmon ©Wildtype

Alt Seafood Investments Hit $178M in the First Six Months of 2022

Alt-seafood investments reached $178 million between January and July of this year, according to Fishfarmingexpert. The figures take into account all investments in plant-based, fermented, and cultivated seafood companies. A huge proportion of the funding raised went to Wildtype, a US-based cultivated salmon producer. The company secured $100 million in February, in the largest ever Series B round for a cultivated seafood startup. Other notable alt-seafood fundraises this year include $10.8 million by Chinese cultivated fish company Avant, $18 million by plant-based salmon and tuna brand Current Foods, and $12.5 million by whole-cut plant-based fish brand Plantish. The latter was said to be the largest ever seed round in alt-seafood. Despite the impressive sums raised, it has been noted that the industry still faces some …

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Pearlita Foods oyster

Image Source: Pearlita Foods

Pearlita Announces “World’s First” Oyster Alternative to Hit Shelves Soon 

Pearlita Foods, the US seafood disruptor, has announced the completion of its first prototype alternative oyster. With the claim of being the world’s first alt oyster company, Pearlita has leveraged plant-based and cell-based technologies to produce authentic and identical oysters, with more alt seafood products in development.  Based in Raleigh, NC, Pearlita has stated that it will first release its plant-based alternative oyster while scaling up its cell lines. The prototype consists of a proprietary mushroom and seaweed formulated base and the company’s novel flavor cocktail that gives the oyster: “a pure delicate and authentic ocean flavor”. The company is now working on scaling up production to bring its alternative oysters to tastings. With conventional oysters known to cause foodborne illnesses and at risk of …

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Shiok Meats founders

©Shiok Meats

Shiok Meats Partners With Conventional Shrimp Company for Cultivated Seafood R&D

Shiok Meats has partnered with Vietnamese conventional shrimp producer Minh Phu Seafood to open a cultivated seafood R&D facility. The two companies have signed a MOU, committing to establishing a joint facility in Vietnam and carrying out research into sustainable seafood. Additionally, they will explore the opportunity to develop, produce, market, and distribute cultivated shrimp products. According to the companies, the collaboration could pave the way for conventional seafood companies to diversify, offering cultivated seafood alongside the traditional variety. Minh Phu says its long-term vision is to pioneer new technologies to make the seafood industry more sustainable. Preparing for commercial launch Shiok Meats has been steadily working towards a commercial launch for some time. The company already operates two R&D facilities in Thailand and Australia, …

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Chris Dammann Bluu Biosciences

Christian Dammann ©Bluu GmbH

Bluu Seafood: “By 2025 Cultivated Seafood Can Be Expected to Appear in Supermarkets”

Christian Dammann, PhD, Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Bluu Seafood and VP at Cellular Agriculture Europe, is an internationally renowned expert in cellular agriculture and cultivated fish development as well as a former co-founder of BlueNalu. Bluu Seafood is one of the first cultivated seafood innovators in the European sphere and appointed Christian as its inaugural COO in 2021.  Christian focuses on process development, scaling-up, and – most crucially – regulatory affairs at Bluu Seafood so we talked with him about the present and future of both the company and the sector.  Plant-based alternatives for meat and some seafood can now be found in many supermarkets around the world. However, only one cultivated product, chicken, is available and only in Singapore. Cultivated seafood is not …

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fish ball soup Umami Meats

©Umami Meats

MeaTech & Umami Meats to Jointly Develop 3D Printed Cultured Seafood

MeaTech 3D Ltd. announces it has signed a memorandum of understanding with Umami Meats for the joint development of 3D-printed cultured structured seafood.  With this agreement, MeaTech adds seafood to its portfolio of bovine, avian and porcine products under development. Continued success for Umami Singaporean cultivated seafood startup Umami Meats, previously named semi-finalist in the XPRIZE “Feed the Next Billion” competition, aims to help make cultivated seafood less expensive to produce, with a mission to develop species that are expected to experience severe supply shortages due to overfishing and climate change. The focus will initially be on the cultivation of Japanese eel, yellowfin tuna, and red snapper, with a view to producing halibut, grouper, and mahi-mahi as future projects.  Umami received investment from CULT Food …

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Is Cultivated Fish Possible at Scale? Find Out From Co-Founder Arye Elfenbein of Wildtype

What will it take to make enough fish from cells to feed the world? If so, what will it take to make enough fish from cells to feed the world? Find out from Co-Founder Arye Elfenbein of Wildtype on this episode of The Plantbased Business Hour with Elysabeth Alfano.  Specifically, they discuss: The benefit of cultivated fish over wild-caught or commercially farmed fish, How Wildtype procures their cell lines, What is the medium used for cell growth? How hard is it to scale, and Is FDA approval pending? Here is a short clip and transcript from their conversation. Podcast here. Display content from YouTube Click here to display content from YouTube. Learn more in YouTube’s privacy policy. Always display content from YouTube Open “Where Does Cultivated Fish …

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Cultivated Fish Burger from Avant

Cultivated Fish Burger from © Avant

Avant Raises $10.8M to Commercialise Cultivated Seafood by 2023

Chinese biotech firm Avant has raised $10.8 million in its Series A funding round. The company intends to use the funding to commercialise cultivated seafood. The round was led by S2G Ventures, with other investors including Lever VC, CPT Capital, and Good Startup. It follows a seed round in late 2020, where Avant secured $3.1 million. At the time, the company was hoping to bring its products to market the following year, but this date has now been amended to 2023. Avant has already made considerable progress towards commercialisation by developing an animal-free cell culture medium. This has reduced the cost of its cultivated fish by over 90%, addressing a key challenge faced by the industry. Technology Pioneer Last year, Avant was named a Technology …

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Aqua Cultured Whitefish

©Kezia/ Aqua Cultured Foods

Aqua Cultured Foods Conducts Alt-Seafood Tastings with Major Industry Partners

Aqua Cultured Foods, a startup making seafood from microbial fermentation, announces it has held multiple private tastings with leading food industry partners, including national distributors, multinational organizations, chefs and other food service and retail providers. The startup also reveals it is raising its next financing round, and actively seeking a Chicago-area site to begin construction of its first commercial plant. Using novel fermentation technology, Aqua is developing what it says are the world’s first whole-muscle cut seafood alternatives. Utilizing natural fermentation, the startup creates animal-free filets of tuna and whitefish as well as calamari, shrimp and scallops without any animal inputs or genetic altering. The startup also states its products offer a complete source of protein without the need for starches or protein isolates. In …

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Cultivated scallops

© Mermade Seafoods

Mermade: Cultivated Scallops Made Using Low-Cost Aquaponics Technology

Mermade Seafoods is an Israeli company developing cultivated scallops. The company claims to be the first in the world to use aquaponics technology in cellular agriculture. Aquaponics is a combination of aquaculture (seafood farming) and hydroponics (growing crops in nutrient solutions rather than soil). Essentially, Mermade takes nutrient-rich spent growth medium — a byproduct of cultivated meat and seafood production — and places it in a bioreactor with microalgae. The resulting algae biomass can be used to feed more cells, a circular process with the potential to drastically reduce the cost of cell cultivation. Mermade says it is focusing on scallops as their shape and texture is relatively easy to replicate. Additionally, conventional scallops are expensive, meaning the cultivated variety will not be significantly more …

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CELL AG TECH Sushi/ FIsh

©CELL AG TECH

CELL AG TECH Joins with Canadian Research Firm CCRM to Scale Cell-Based Fish Manufacturing

CULT Food Science, an alt-protein investment platform, announces its portfolio company CELL AG TECH is collaborating with the Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine (CCRM) to efficiently scale CELL AG’s cultured seafood manufacturing. CELL AG has also been named a winner in Canada’s AcCELLerate-ON competition for its work on scaling fish muscle stem cells in 2D and 3D. As part of the signed agreement, CELL AG and CCRM’s scientists will work on developing a cost-effective and efficient process for growing fish cells in bioreactors. A leader in regenerative medicine-based technologies, CCRM’s cell manufacturing knowledge and ability to apply regenerative medicine principles to cell culturing will accelerate CELL AG’s development processes and improve product quality, the startup says.  Though the scaling of cell-based fish and seafood …

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EFISHient

©EFISHient

New Cultivated Seafood Startup E-FISHient Launched in Collab with Israeli Ministry of Agriculture

E-FISHient, a new cultivated seafood startup, has been launched in Israel. After success in the cultivated meat field, BioMeat Foodtech, the publicly traded Israeli investment fund, has collaborated with the Volcani Institute – a governmental organization and officially an arm of the Ministry of Agriculture – to develop the cultivated fish meat company. The Volcani Center, Israel’s national agricultural R&D center, will back the joint E-FISHient venture which will manufacture and market cultivated tilapia fish based on non-animal serum. The Nile tilapia is one of the most commonly grown fish species in global aquaculture – thus presenting a large market, while the serum itself is an additional product intended to serve the whole cultivated meat industry in general.  The BioMeat Foodtech partnership will hold the …

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