Dutch innovative food tech company Meatable is moving forward with plans to build a pilot-scale facility in Singapore for the production of cultivated meat. To this end, Meatable will collaborate with TruMeat, a newly established company led by executives with significant experience in large-scale biomanufacturing and cell culture media production.

Leveraging Meatable's technology, the pilot plant to be built by TruMeat is currently contingent on securing additional funding and is expected to break ground within this year. While detailed information is lacking, the press release states that this new facility will "for the first time provide cultivated meat in Singapore at a cost level and production scale needed for commercial partners to develop, test and launch products."

Should this de-risking process and business model prove successful, Meatable hopes to attract large meat processors or food companies as commercial partners to fund its first large-scale commercial production facility.

Jeff Tripician, CEO of Meatable, stated, "This is the next step in our journey to make cultivated meat more accessible and affordable."

A Meatable spokesperson mentioned in an interview with AgFunderNews that more information would be shared soon, adding, "While TruMeat is a newly formed entity in Singapore, it draws on the expertise of large industry experts in the Asian region. We expect to start building the facility within this year, at which point we can provide more details on the bioreactor capacity and scale."

Additionally, Meatable has submitted relevant documents to Singaporean regulatory authorities and the spokesperson noted that they are "preparing to file in several other countries in the coming months."

Presenting a New Model for Scaling Up Cultivated Meat Production

Tripician, a US meat industry veteran who joined Meatable as CEO last summer, does not foresee a return to the 2021 scenario where venture capital funds were used to independently build large-scale commercial facilities.

In a recent interview, he stated, "Companies with the best science will partner with existing meat companies to build large-scale plants," adding that Meatable will "become a supplier of raw materials to meat companies, which may sound somewhat unglamorous. Meat companies are likely to include gradually building independent cultivated meat plants as part of their capital expenditure plans over the next few decades."

CEO Tripician also emphasized, "Cultivated meat and seafood can be made to order and eliminate issues related to land, water, disease (avian flu, swine flu), animal welfare, and antibiotics," adding, "If we can solve these issues that consumers care about and have already shown a willingness to pay extra for, there's no reason why consumers wouldn't buy it when produced efficiently."

Hype, Stagnation, Consolidation, and Pivot

Over the past two years, Meatable has significantly reduced the production time for its cultivated pork by dramatically shortening the process by which its proprietary stem cells differentiate into fat and muscle, leading to further improvements in unit economics at a time when the industry is facing significant challenges.

In an interview last year, co-founder Daan Luining acknowledged that the cultivated meat industry was going through a difficult period, but noted that Meatable had raised the largest Series B funding round in the industry in 2023, totaling $35 million, bringing its total funding to nearly $100 million.

Luining, a biologist who co-founded Meatable in 2018 with stem cell biologist Dr. Mark Kotter and former McKinsey executive Krijn de Nood, said, "What we are witnessing now is the natural cycle that occurs in all innovations: namely, the stages of hype, stagnation, consolidation, and pivot. However, companies with unique and valuable technologies will survive because they are worth investing in."

Instead of "reprogramming" or inducing adult cells to behave like embryonic stem cells, Meatable uses a method of extracting pluripotent stem cells from the umbilical cords of animals. According to Luining, these cells have specific advantages such as rapid division and versatility (they can differentiate or transform into various cell types, such as fat or muscle), and are cultured in a continuous perfusion manner.

However, Meatable's core technology lies in its ability to understand and control specific mechanisms within cells using Opti-Ox, a patented technology developed by co-founder Dr. Mark Kotter, thereby inducing cells to develop into various types. This technology activates combinations of transcription factors that encode the identity of cells with a precision that is "rare in biology," allowing Meatable to accurately control and dramatically shorten the differentiation process, explained Luining.

Luining emphasized, "We utilize the natural ability of cells to turn into muscle or fat; it's like flipping a switch to convert them into muscle or fat. This is a true innovation in stem cell biology. We have reduced the time it takes to differentiate pluripotent stem cells into muscle and fat cells from 45 days to 21 days, 8 days, and now 4 days. Producing at this speed is ultimately what makes our cultivated meat production process economically viable."

While Meatable does not use a tissue engineering approach for its initial products, the harvested cells are fully differentiated, which is important from a nutritional perspective, Luining added. "Don't get me wrong, we're not making steak, but we are making high-quality fat and muscle," he said.

Singapore is one of the countries actively interested in the cultivated meat industry. In December 2020, US company Eat Just's cultivated chicken product received the world's first regulatory approval for sale in Singapore, marking a significant milestone for the cultivated meat industry. The Singaporean government is actively fostering the alternative protein industry, including cultivated meat, to enhance food security and build a sustainable food system.

Meatable's plan to build a pilot plant in Singapore is expected to create synergy with these supportive policies of the Singaporean government. Furthermore, as the Asian market is one of the largest meat consumption markets globally, Meatable's market entry strategy based in Singapore could position it favorably in the future global cultivated meat market competition.

Meatable's technological strength, the rapid cell differentiation technology, is expected to play a crucial role in securing a competitive advantage in terms of production cost reduction and mass production potential. In particular, the strategy of expanding production scale and securing distribution channels through collaboration with existing meat processing companies could accelerate the commercialization of cultivated meat.

However, public acceptance and improved consumer perception of cultivated meat, as well as changes in the regulatory environment, are challenges that Meatable and other cultivated meat companies must address. Meatable's next steps in the global market, starting with Singapore, are drawing attention.