Meatly ‘Proves Critics Wrong’ with Dramatic Cost Reductions for Cultivated Pet Food

British pet food startup Meatly has announced a wave of breakthroughs that significantly slash the cost of cultivated meat, bringing it closer to price parity with chicken.

Food tech innovators are continuing to make advancements that close the price gap between cultivated meat and conventional animal proteins.

In the UK, Meatly has made waves over the last year after becoming the first company to be approved to sell cultivated meat in Europe, debuting cultivated treats for dogs on shelves in February.

That limited-edition, co-branded product – titled Chick Bites – was priced at £3.49 per 50g pouch – or £69.80 per kg. And that only contained 4% of cultivated meat. In comparison, an oven-baked chicken treat by Good Boy is priced at £23.08 per kg. Conventional dog food can be three times cheaper than cultivated meat right now, but that may be about to change.

Meatly has announced several tech breakthroughs in its production process, including the development of a new bioreactor and the optimisation of its protein-free culture medium, which allow the startup to inch closer to price parity with conventional chicken.

“Many have cast doubt that the industry would ever reach this point – but we’re pleased to prove these critics wrong,” says Meatly co-founder and chief scientific officer Helder Cruz. “We are showing the world that we can produce meat in a kinder, better way, and we can make it at a price which makes it easy for brands to incorporate Meatly Chicken as an affordable ingredient in their existing product range.”

Meatly breaks away from pharma bioreactors

According to consultancy giant McKinsey, to meet the industry’s growth demands, cultivated meat firms would need up to 22 times more fermentation capacity than currently exists in the global pharmaceutical sector.

But it’s not just the capacity. Much of the biotechnology created to make pharmaceuticals isn’t purpose-built for cultivated meat. The per-tonne demand for cultivated meat is seven times higher than for biopharma drugs produced from mammalian cell cultures.

There’s also a perception problem. People have more concerns about GMOs in food than in medicines, while the accepted ideal costs for biopharma drugs are between $500,000 and $1M. For cultivated meat, this is as low as $5-10 per kg.

It necessitates the need for more modern, purpose-built bioreactors. Meatly has successfully built and conducted a first cell growth run in a custom-designed, pilot-scale bioreactor with a capacity of 320 litres. It has the biocompatibility, longevity, scalability and overall performance to meet the cell culture requirements of an industrial-scale facility with multiple 20,000-litre bioreactors.

Meatly intends to develop tanks with the latter capacity as part of its next funding stage, but its new 320-litre equipment costs just £12,500 ($16,900), making it 95% cheaper than traditional fermenters, which can cost up to £250,000 ($338,000).

It is one of several companies that have announced bioreactor breakthroughs. US startup Mission Barns, whose cultivated pork was approved for sale in the country this year, has developed a novel bioreactor that makes a departure from the single-cell suspension tanks of the biopharma sector, making cultivated meat production more efficient, easier to scale, and cheaper.

Meanwhile, Israel’s Ever After Foods is working with Bühler Group to build a commercial-scale system that can produce cultivated meat using equipment at least 10 times smaller than the industry standard.

Culture media wins will enable price parity at scale

Meatly’s second crucial advancement concerns its culture medium, a mix of nutrients that facilitate the growth of animal cells. Typically, culture media cost hundreds of pounds per litre and account for the majority of the costs involved in the entire process.

But last year, the London-based startup created a protein-free medium that contains no serum or animal-derived components, steroids, hormones, antibiotics or growth factors. The startup’s innovation is food-safe and used in its suspension culture bioreactors without microcarriers, which are typically needed to help cells proliferate and enhance their density.

This has lots of advantages when it comes to cost and quality controls. “But in the composition of the cells, not so much,” Cruz told Green Queen last year. “Of course, we can always play with some nutrients, but not necessarily proteins, to fine-tune the composition – like fatty acids, some amino acids and so on.”

Then, this culture medium cost £1 ($1.25 at the time) per litre. But now, it has further reduced this price to 22p (30 cents) per litre, which will further reduce to 1.5p (two cents) at industrial scale.

“We’ve achieved this reduction by successfully replacing costly components such as albumin, transferrin, insulin, and all growth factors in our culture media – an industry first,” Meatly co-founder and CEO Owen Ensor tells Green Queen.

“Additionally, we’ve managed to replicate performance using food-grade ingredients. This breakthrough has significantly lowered costs and improved supply chain resilience.”

Additionally, the medium is now capable of supporting cell growth for over 175 doublings, a substantial improvement on historical media performance. It will allow Meatly’s cultivated chicken to be priced competitively with average EU chicken breast prices once scaled.

Meatly confident in fundraising despite industry-wide downturn

“Our continued development of this protein-free culture medium marks a significant milestone for both Meatly and the broader cultivated meat sector,” says Ensor. “By setting a new cost benchmark, we’re addressing one of the industry’s most persistent challenges – bringing production costs down to make cultivated meat commercially viable and reach price parity with traditional products.”

The company, which has raised £5M to date, is now kickstarting a funding round for a low-cost industrial facility to profitably scale production of its cultivated meat.

“We’re confident in securing the capital we need. While we’re not disclosing the exact target publicly at this stage, we have a healthy runway in place and are actively engaged with several interested partners,” says Ensor.

Convincing investors to bet on cultivated meat today is a tall order – the sector saw funding decline by 75% in 2023, and a further 40% in 2024. In fact, in the last three years, this sector has cumulatively raised less money than it did in 2021 alone.

“We recognise that the current investment climate is more cautious, particularly within the cultivated meat sector, so we’re taking a measured approach. That said, we’re well-positioned to scale quickly once funding is secured. Updates like the ones we’re making today show how Meatly is focused on continuing to prove there is a fast, efficient way to scale cultivated meat,” says Ensor.

Fellow cultivated pet food startup BioCraft Pet Nutrition has also developed a plant-based growth medium that reduces the cost of its ingredient to $2-2.50 per lb. And in Israel, SuperMeat has made several breakthroughs to produce its cultivated chicken for $12 per lb, while Believer Meats has described how its continuous process can potentially produce cultivated chicken for $6 per lb at scale.

As for Meatly, Ensor notes that the Chick Bites were a “one-off” product launch. “We’re now working on providing our Meatly Chicken for additional products in the near future,” he says, without going into any specifics. He teases more information on new products “in the coming months”.

Its costs advancements are vital for the mainstream adoption of cultivated meat. According to a recent 4,000-person survey in Europe, three in five consumers feel cultivated meat will only be successful if it’s affordable for everyone. In fact, nearly half expect it to be cheaper than conventional meat, and only 15% would buy it if it’s more expensive (versus 60% who wouldn’t).

“By reaching price parity, it then becomes a simple and easy choice for consumers to buy better meat for their pets,” says Cruz.