CULT FOOD SCIENCE CORP, a Canadian-based investment platform focused exclusively on investments in cultured, lab-grown meat and dairy products, has completed the closing of a strategic investment in Biftek Inc. The news follows its very recent investment into Novel Farms, producer of whole cuts of gourmet cell-cultured meat such as Iberian pork and dry-cured Iberian ham.
Biftek plans to use CULT’s growth capital infusion to produce and distribute recipe samples to global cultured meat manufacturers, file additional patents and expand its intellectual property portfolio.
Biftek was founded in 2018 and is headquartered in Ankara, Turkey. The company produces an animal-free, non-GMO, natural growth medium that makes cultured meat more affordable. Biftek is a business-to-business company that uses a novel culture medium supplement formula to grow muscle stem cells. Currently, growing stem cells requires fetal bovine serum (“FBS”), which accounts for 80-90% of production costs. Biftek’s formulation is expected to dramatically reduce the cost of producing cellular agricultural products, enabling food technology companies to reduce production costs, achieve economies of scale and offer cultured meat to the general population.
The strategic investment in Biftek supports CULT’s goal of building a focused portfolio of the most innovative cultured meat and cultured dairy companies and assets globally. However, the cultured meat and cultured dairy industry is still in its infancy and highly fragmented, with only one listed company currently available to investors globally. Therefore, CULT is focused on creating an opportunity for individuals to invest in the future of food in the near future by providing access to a promising group of exciting and disruptive private companies in these sectors.
“At CULT, we strongly believe that the future of food will be science-based. To realise this future, we recognise that input and production costs for cultured meat must drop significantly to drive commercial viability and widespread acceptance. Our investment in Biftek, a company at the forefront of improving the scalability of cultured meat, supports our vision of a cleaner, more ethical and safer food supply chain,” said Dorian Banks, CEO of CULT.
