Pilot facility

The Cultured Hub opening event

©The Cultured Hub

Manufacturing & Technology

The Cultured Hub Facility Finally Opens, Positioning Switzerland as a Leader in Scaling Cell-Based Foods

The Cultured Hub has launched a “scale-up as a service” facility for cell-based foods in The Valley in Kemptthal, Switzerland, and celebrated its opening yesterday with the State of Play Cultured Foods 2.0 event. The Cultured Hub is a joint venture between three Swiss industry giants — Migros, Givaudan, and Bühler Group as first announced in 2021 —  that aims to leverage their extensive food processing and product development experience to accelerate the production of cultivated meat and other cell-based foods. The new “state-of-the-art” biotech facility features advanced labs and fermentation capabilities to help startups scale from lab to pilot operations (up to 1,000 liters), facilitating a quicker market entry. It can host three companies simultaneously, each in separate suites, encouraging collaboration and innovation without the …

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A photo of a fished Atlantic salmon

© BLUU Seafood - Anna Brauns

Company News

BLUU Seafood Expands Cultivated Fish Production in Preparation for Market Entry, Predicts Price Parity With Fish Within 3 Years

Europe’s largest cultivated seafood biotech, the German startup BLUU Seafood, announces that it has officially inaugurated its first pilot plant in Hamburg-Altona.   The new facility boasts 2,000 m2 of space dedicated to research, production, and office use for its 35 employees. It includes state-of-the-art cell and molecular biology labs, process development areas, and a test kitchen for food applications. At the new plant, the company will initially operate 65 L bioreactors, with the potential to expand to 2,000 L to scale to industrial production as it prepares for market entry. The startup initially operated on a small scale in a laboratory setting in Lübeck, using stem-cell technology to establish GMO-free fish cell lines to grow muscle, fat, and connective tissue from Atlantic salmon and rainbow trout …

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Meatable's CEO Krijn de Nood cutting the ribbon of the company's new pilot facility

Krijn de Nood, CEO of Meatable cutting the ribbon - Image courtesy of Meatable
Cultivated Meat

Netherlands: Meatable Opens Larger Pilot Facility Ahead of 2024 Cultivated Pork Launch

Dutch biotech company Meatable yesterday inaugurated a new pilot facility at the Bio Science Park in Leiden, the Netherlands, to expand the production capacity of its cultivated pork platform. The new pilot facility follows a successful $35 million Series B round this summer, which brought the company’s raised capital for cultivated pork to $95 million. According to Meatable, the new 3300m2 facility is twice the size of its previous office and lab space. It has a bioreactor capacity of 200 L (500 L in the future), allowing the company to expand its production from the previous 50 L. The company states that this expansion is an important milestone in producing and testing larger quantities of cultivated pork products as it prepares for a commercial launch in …

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JBS has commenced construction of Brazil's first research facility focused on cultivated meat.

© JBS
Company News

Meat Giant JBS Begins Construction on $62M Innovation Centre for Cultivated Meat

JBS, the largest meat processing company in the world, announces it has commenced construction of Brazil’s first research facility focused on food biotechnology — the JBS Biotech Innovation Centre. Located at Sapiens Parque innovation hub in Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, and scheduled to open at the end of 2024, the center aims to be a model facility to produce cultivated meat efficiently, scalable, and at competitive prices. “As a global leader in protein production, it is our responsibility to be at the forefront of foodtech,” says Jerson Nascimento Jr., global supply and innovation director of JBS. $ 62 million According to JBS, the Biotech Innovation Centre will require approximately $62 million in investment over three phases. In the first phase, the meat giant will invest $22 million …

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CellX launched China's first large-scale pilot plant for cultivated meat

Image courtesy of CellX
Company News

CellX Commences Operations at China’s First Large Scale Cultivated Meat Plant

Chinese biotech company CellX announces it has established and commenced operations at what it claims to be China’s first large-scale pilot plant for cultivated meat. The new pilot plant, the FX factory, has a capacity of 1,000 tons of cultivated meat, representing a significant milestone for CellX’s biotechnology. The facility will be a testing ground for larger-scale production necessary to bring products to market. CellX is building a commercial-scale production factory set to launch in 2025, with an anticipated production capacity of hundreds of tons. CellX, which stands out as one of the few companies capable of upscaling cultivated meat production, secured $6.5 million to complete its pilot-scale facility this June, bringing its total funding to $20 million. “Cultivated meat technology embodies a safe, efficient, and sustainable …

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Arkeon Biotechnologies opens pilot facility

© Arkeon Biotechnologies
Company News

Arkeon Biotechnologies Opens Pilot Production Facility to Bring CO2 Proteins to Market

Arkeon Biotechnologies, an Austrian startup converting CO2 into functional protein ingredients, announces it has achieved a significant milestone in its production process after successfully setting up a new pilot production plant. Located in Vienna’s Seestadt Innovation Hub, the new facility expands the company’s infrastructure with a 150L bioreactor system that, according to Arkeon, will improve its process and lay the biotechnological foundation for future large-scale production. Last year, Arkeon Biotechnologies unveiled its revolutionary new tech, which is capable of transforming CO2 into proteins. Its advanced process requires 99% less land and only 0.01% of the amount of water needed by traditional agriculture. Moreover, the microorganism fed with the gas fermentation technique is able to generate all 20 essential amino acids, explains the startup. The pilot plant …

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GEA opens New Food Center to develop cultivated meat and precision fermentation products

Image courtesy of GEA
Company News

GEA Opens Alt Protein Pilot Center, Celebrates 60th Anniversary at ProPack Asia

GEA has inaugurated a central hub for alt proteins — featuring pilot lines for cell cultures and microbial fermentation — to test and produce cultivated meat and animal-free dairy alternatives. Located in Hildesheim, Germany, the New Food Application and Technology Center of Excellence (ATC) will enable customers to “fast-track” innovations from the lab to commercial-scale manufacturing. “Establishing and scaling up a new food production facility is a major task,” said Heinz Jürgen Kroner, Senior Vice President of New Food at GEA. “In many cases, new food producers are still stuck at the lab scale – with the hygiene, aseptic, and process requirements that involves. On the other hand, industrial-scale manufacturing presents much greater technical and financial challenges,” he continued. Commercial feasibility According to GEA, the center …

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Biomanufacturing at Mycorena

© Mycorena
Manufacturing & Technology

Report Finds Lack of Fermentation Facilities is Causing Global Biomanufacturing Bottleneck

A new report released today by Synonym Bio, a financing and development platform for essential biomanufacturing infrastructure, reveals that a severe shortage of fermentation facilities is leading to a worldwide biomanufacturing bottleneck.  Based on data from Capacitor bio, a free online database developed by Synonym Bio with Blue Horizon, the Good Food Institute, and the Material Innovation Initiative; the report, titled The State of Global Fermentation Capacity, offers new and valuable details on types of facilities by geography, bioreactor sizes, product expertise, and more. Lack of capacity to meet demand The study, which documents 150+ synthetic biology companies in 30+ countries, found that most available facilities are bench scale (29%) or pilot-scale (41%), including contract manufacturing organizations, academic research facilities, well-known players such as Corbion and Phyton Biotech …

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