Cultivated scallops

© Mermade Seafoods

Investments & Acquisitions

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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Cultivated scallops

© Mermade Seafoods

Cultivated Seafood

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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