Cell Based Tech Weekly – Cell Based Lobbying, Memphis Meats Raises $161M, TurtleTree Labs Seed Funding

Categories Weekly Report

In September 2019, we saw five cell based meat and seafood companies (BlueNalu, Finless Foods, Fork & Goode, JUST, and Memphis Meats) form the Alliance for Meat, Poultry & Seafood Innovation (AMPS Innovation), a coalition to create the regulatory framework for meat, poultry and seafood that is grown directly from animal cells. https://cellbased.link/mzr

The AMPS coalition is taking action by hiring influential lobbying strategist agency Glover Park Group to lobby the Dept. of Agriculture and Food & Drug Administration. https://cellbased.link/ifc 

Why We Care: This proactive step may be an indication that cell based meat companies are coming closer to launching products in the market. This news comes the same week that one of the coalition member companies, Memphis Meats, completed a Series B funding round…

💵 With $161 million Series B funding, Memphis Meats will use this capital “to build a pilot production facility, grow its world-class team and bring products to market,” according to a company press release. https://cellbased.link/1id 

The Series B round represents the largest investment in a cell-based meat company to date. New investors include SoftBank Group, Norwest and Temasek as well as existing investors: Richard Branson, Bill Gates, Threshold Ventures, Cargill, Tyson Foods, Finistere, Future Ventures, Kimbal Musk, Fifty Years and CPT Capital. This brings Memphis Meats total funding to $181 million. 

Advancements

🐠 Dutch animal nutrition and fish feed company Nutreco announced a strategic partnership with cellular aquaculture company BlueNalu. https://cellbased.link/los 

Through the partnership Nutreco will provide:

  1. Optimization of BlueNalu’s proprietary growth media
  2. Global supply chain partnership to supply ingredients used in media formulation 

Why We Care: Nutreco is another major player from the conventional ag world alongside Cargill, Tyson, and Merck looking to secure a spot in a cell based future. 

Investments

🐢 TurtleTree Labs, the Singapore based company using stem cells to grow mammary glands for milk production announced a pre-seed fundraise (amount undisclosed). Investors include Lever VC, K2 Global, and KBW Ventures. https://cellbased.link/f1l 

Unique Tech: Unlike Perfect Day’s methodology which uses precision fermentation to produce milk proteins, Turtle Tree uses a tissue engineering process.This methodology enables Turtle Tree to create a whole identical product to that of animal or human milk rather than just the milk proteins like casein or whey. 

According to a company press release: “The seed funding will be used to further build out the company’s scientific team and to create additional prototypes. TurtleTree Labs plans to publicly debut the world’s first cultivated milk (and mother’s milk) products in the Spring.”

A Simple Explanation

With interest in cell based meat building each day, it’s helpful and important to know what it is. Although not simple, and this only scratches the surface, we’ve put together some imagery to help describe the process.

Invite friends and family to our quick breakdown: What is cell based meat (aka lab grown meat)?

Events

For those of you who are wondering when cell based meat will be on the market: The Industrializing Cell- Based Meat Summit, March 24-26, 2020 @ Hotel Kabuki, San Francisco. … may have some answers for you.

Here are some highlights:

  • Ryan Bethencourt, CEO Wild Earth is a keynote presenter discussing the topic: Creating Realistic Flavor in Cell-Based Meats & the advancements that have been made in the last 12 months to recreate realistic taste of meat.
  • Leo Groenewegen, CEO CellularRevolution will talk about continuous cell culturing techniques and creation of bioreactor capable of continuous cell production.
  • Paul Shapiro, Chief Executive Officer & Co founder, The Better Meat Co. providing an analysis on cross compatibility between current antibody purification methodologies & the needs of the cell-based meat industry.

Tickets: https://cellbased.link/tx8