The Impossible Burger 2.0, a plant-based vegan burger that tastes like real beef. Copyright © Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images
Annex 1: Companies Active in the Production of Plant-based ‘Meat’ and Cultured Meat
|
Company |
Founded |
Origin |
Funds raised |
Investors |
Activities |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Plant-based ‘meat’ companies |
|||||
|
Beyond Meat |
2009 |
US |
$72m |
Bill Gates; Tyson Foods; Twitter co-founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams; Leonardo DiCaprio; former McDonald’s CEO Don Thompson.165 |
Retail distribution, particularly through Whole Foods Market Inc. On 12 April 2018, Germany’s PHW Group announced it had become a strategic partner to Beyond Meat to launch its plant-based burger in Europe.166 |
|
ChickP |
2016 |
Israel |
$0.5m |
Agrinnovation, an investment company that commercializes agricultural technologies generated by The Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s faculty of agriculture.167 |
|
|
Dao Foods |
2018 |
China |
Seed funding (undisclosed) |
Dao Ventures; Moonspire Social Ventures; New Crop Capital.168 |
Venture group that aims to create meat alternatives for Chinese consumers.169 |
|
Gold & Green |
2015 |
Finland |
Paulig acquired a 51% stake for an undisclosed amount in 2016. Prior to this, the company had raised over €1m. |
Finnish food company Paulig has been the majority shareholder since 2016.170 |
Gold & Green’s products are made from oats as an alternative to mince or as an ingredient in salads or sandwiches. The company says it hopes to launch its products in the UK ‘in the near future’.171 |
|
Impossible Foods |
2011 |
US |
$387m |
Bill Gates; Open Philanthropy Project; Khosla Ventures; Google Ventures; UBS Group AG; Viking Global Investors; Horizons Ventures; Temasek; Sailing Capital.172 |
Supplying the food service industry; product available in more than 4,000 locations in the US, Hong Kong and Macao.173 |
|
Ojah |
2009 |
Netherlands |
Undisclosed |
Korys; Kerry Group will become a shareholder pending merger approval from the European Commission.174 |
Ojah’s technology enables the company to produce wet texturized plant protein with a meat-like taste and texture. The range is also gluten-free and additive-free. Ojah exports its products to more than 21 countries.175 |
|
Right Treat |
2018 |
Hong Kong |
Undisclosed |
Undisclosed. |
Developing a plant-based protein for Asian consumers. Plant-based ‘Omnipork’ launched in 2018, designed as a versatile product that can be used to cook a variety of Asian dishes.176 |
|
Sunfed Meats |
2015 |
New Zealand |
Undisclosed |
Jeremy Coller of Coller Capital; New Crop Capital; ‘angel investors’ from New Zealand, the US and the UK.177 |
Established company in New Zealand, distributing frozen product through Countdown and New World supermarkets, among others. It emphasizes the chicken-like taste and texture of its products. The company is planning to expand internationally, with the UK as a key future market.178 |
|
The Vegetarian Butcher |
2010 |
Netherlands |
$10m |
Private investors, who bought €2.5m in bonds; Triodos Bank.179 |
Innovative plant-based meat and fish substitutes, which are in several European countries through their own or third-party stores. The Vegetarian Butcher has expanded to 3,000 sales outlets in 14 countries and has its own production plant.180 The company also has a partnership with UK-based Waitrose & Partners to supply the meat alternatives for its new plant-based range of ready meals.181 |
|
Cultured-meat companies |
|||||
|
Aleph Farms |
2017 |
Israel |
Undisclosed |
Aleph Farms was co-founded in 2017 by Technion and Israeli food-tech ‘incubator’ The Kitchen, a part of the Strauss Group, and is supported by US and European venture capital firms.182 |
The company uses 3D technology and applies the tools of regenerative medicine to produce cultured meat.183 |
|
Finless Foods |
2017 |
US |
$3.5m |
A total of 13 investors, including Harrison Blue Ventures; Hemisphere Ventures; StarLightMedia; Olive Tree Capital; Softmatter VC; U-Start; Yakumi Investment; Blue Horizon Equity; Babel Ventures; Draper Associates.184 |
This biotechnology company is at an early stage of developing and mass producing pioneering marine animal food products for human consumption.185 |
|
Future Meat Technologies |
2018 |
Israel |
$2.2m |
S2G Ventures; HB Ventures; Yissum (the technology transfer company of The Hebrew University); Neto Group; BitsXBites; Agrinnovation; Tyson New Ventures.186 |
The only company worldwide holding an unlimited cell source that was not genetically modified, capable of differentiating to both muscle and fat. The technology was exclusively licensed from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.187 |
|
Higher Steaks |
2017 |
UK |
Undisclosed |
Undisclosed |
The company is developing a production method that substantially reduces the amount of media needed to produce cell-based meat; an intelligent in-process monitoring system to improve efficiency; and a biomaterial that allows the generation of more structurally complex products.188 |
|
Integriculture Inc. |
2015 |
Japan |
¥300m |
Real Tech Fund; Beyond Next Ventures; A-FIVE (Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Fund Corporation for Innovation, Value-chain and Expansion Japan); MTG Co., Ltd.; euglena Co., Ltd.; Dr Hiroaki Kitano (CEO of Sony Computer Science Laboratories, Inc.); and other investors.189 |
Food tech company aiming to reform current agriculture through cultured-meat production, has developed patented general-purpose large-scale cell culture system, ‘CulNet System’. Demonstrated a clean chicken foie gras product in 2017.190 |
|
JUST |
2011 |
US |
$220m |
Temasek; Mitsui; Founders Fund; Li Ka-shing; the Heineken family.191 |
The company is still developing its lab-grown meat, but it is confident it can make scalable lab meat that is safe, free of antibiotics and carries less risk of food-borne illness.192 |
|
Memphis Meats |
2015 |
US |
$20.1m |
Tyson Foods; Draper Fisher Jurvetson; Cargill; New Crop Capital; Richard Branson; Bill Gates.193 |
Considered the leading company in the cultured-meat market, the company has already cultured a ‘clean’ beef meatball and in 2017 unveiled lab-grown chicken and duck.194 |
|
Mosa Meat |
2013 |
Netherlands |
€7.5m |
M Ventures; Bell Food Group.195 |
Dutch start-up co-founded by Mark Post, the scientist who invented the first lab-grown burger. It expects to introduce its first product made of lab-grown meat to the market by 2021.196 |
|
SuperMeat |
2015 |
Israel |
$3.5m |
Stray Dog Capital; New Crop Capital. Germany’s PHW Group, one of Europe’s largest poultry producers, became a strategic investor in January 2018.197 |
Its technology relies on a single biopsy, which can allow for scaling up production of cultured-meat products.198 |
|
Wild Type |
2016 |
US |
$3.5m |
Mission Bay Capital; Root Ventures; Spark Capital.199 |
The company aims to develop a technology that would multiply basic animal cells in the lab to create a technology that could be applied across all kinds of different animal species and culture all types of meat.200 |
165 Glotz, J. (2018), ‘Meat the disruptors: 15 startups shaking up the $90bn global meat industry’, The Grocer, 13 April 2018, https://www.thegrocer.co.uk/home/topics/future-of-meat/from-plant-based-burgers-to-lab-grown-meatballs-15-startups-disrupting-the-global-meat-industry/565785.article (accessed 5 Jan. 2019).
166 Ibid.
167 Ibid.
168 Ibid.
169 Ibid.
170 Ibid.
171 Ibid.
172 Ibid.
173 Lee-Zogbessou, J. (2018), ‘Impossible Foods: the rise of the meat-free plant-based burger’, Verdict Foodservice, 2 October 2018, https://www.verdictfoodservice.com/insight/impossible-foods-plant-based-burger/ (accessed 5 Jan. 2019).
174 Glotz (2018), ‘Meat the disruptors: 15 startups shaking up the $90bn global meat industry’.
175 Ibid.
176 Right Treat (2018), https://www.linkedin.com/company/right-treat/ (accessed 5 Jan. 2019).
177 Glotz (2018), ‘Meat the disruptors: 15 startups shaking up the $90bn global meat industry’.
178 Ibid.
179 Ibid.
180 The Vegetarian Butcher (2018), ‘https://www.thevegetarianbutcher.com/about-us/vegetarian-butcher-produc…’ (accessed 5 Jan. 2019).
181 Glotz (2018), ‘Meat the disruptors: 15 startups shaking up the $90bn global meat industry’.
182 Leichman, A. K. (2018), ‘Tyson Food invests in Israeli clean-meat startup’, Israeli21c, 18 May 2018, https://www.israel21c.org/tyson-foods-invests-in-israeli-clean-meat-startup/ (accessed 5 Jan. 2019).
183 Brodwin, E. (2018), ‘The company behind America’s favourite hummus has funded an under-the-radar effort to make lab-grown steak’, Business Insider, 3 May 2018, https://www.businessinsider.com/sabra-company-funded-lab-grown-steak-clean-meat-2018-5?r=UK (accessed 5 Jan. 2019).
184 Cosgrove, E. (2018), ‘Finless Foods Raises $3.5m Seed Round to Culture Bluefin Tuna’, agfundernews, 20 June 2018, https://agfundernews.com/finless-foods-raises-seed-culture-bluefin-tuna.html (accessed 5 Jan. 2019).
185 Ibid.
186 PR Newswire. (2018), ‘Tyson Ventures Announces Investment in Future Meat Technologies’, PR Newswire, 2 May 2018, https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/tyson-ventures-announces-investment-in-future-meat-technologies-300641006.html (accessed 5 Jan. 2019).
187 Ibid.
188 Young, T. (2018), ‘Cell-Based Meat Company Higher Steaks On What It Takes To Go From Lab To Table’, Forbes, 13 November 2018, https://www.forbes.com/sites/tiffanyyoung1/2018/11/13/cell-based-meat-c… (accessed 5 Jan. 2019).
189 CrunchBase (2018), https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/integriculture#section-overview (accessed 5 Jan. 2019).
190 Ibid.
191 Glotz (2018), ‘Meat the disruptors: 15 startups shaking up the $90bn global meat industry’.
192 Ibid.
193 Ibid.
194 Ibid.
195 Fernández, C. R. (2018), ‘Lab-Grown Meat Will Be on the Market in 2021’, LABIOTECH.eu, 18 Jul 2018, https://labiotech.eu/food/mosa-meat-lab-grown-meat-fundraising/ (accessed 5 Jan. 2019).
196 Ibid.
197 Glotz (2018), ‘Meat the disruptors: 15 startups shaking up the $90bn global meat industry’.
198 Ibid.
199 Crichton, D. (2018), ‘Wild Type raises $3.5M to reinvent meat for the 21st century’, Techcrunch, 23 March 2018, https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/29/wild-type-raises-3-5m-to-reinvent-meat-for-the-21st-century/?guccounter=1 (accessed 5 Jan. 2019).
200 Rodriguez, V. (2018), ‘Wild Type – A Startup With The Mission To Feed The World with Lab-Grown Meat’, foodabletv, 13 April 2018, https://www.foodabletv.com/blog/2018/4/13/wild-type-a-startup-with-the-mission-to-feed-the-world-with-lab-grown-meat (accessed 5 Jan. 2019).