Aleph Farms, an Israeli lab-grown meat firm, and Wacker Chemie, a German chemicals company, will collaborate to optimize growth protein production methods, removing one of the main barriers to large-scale cultivated meat production.
Cultivated meat, which is grown in a lab from animal muscle cells, has received a lot of attention as a solution to combat climate change by reducing the meat industry’s energy, land, and water use.
However, unlike plant-based alternatives popularized by companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, the technology remains specialized due to challenges such as high production costs.
Wacker and Aleph will work together to increase the production of so-called growth medium proteins, which can support cell growth and are the key costs in synthetic meat production, as part of the agreement announced on Wednesday.
“The proteins are either not accessible on the market at all or are only available in small quantities for research and development. The costs are currently up to 1,000 times greater than the value we want to achieve; Wacker Chemie is a chemical company.
According to the companies, the arrangement is non-exclusive, which means that any grown meat producer will be able to buy the proteins from Wacker at the same price.
Only the California-based Eat Just has regulatory authority to sell lab-grown meat, and the approval is only valid in Singapore. Rivals include Israel’s Mosa Meat and Future Meat Technologies, Upside Foods in the United States, and dozens of smaller enterprises.
Aleph wants to start selling its thin-cut beef steaks to restaurants by the end of 2022 and reach the broad market over the following four to five years, according to Chief Executive Didier Toubia, who is working with regulators around the world.
“When our product reaches the market, we expect it to be a few tens of percent more expensive for the consumer than butchered meat. At this point, we will truly lose money “Toubia remarked.
According to the CEO, Aleph will be able to break even before reaching the pricing levels of conventional meat production since it will be able to lower costs faster than companies producing plant-based goods.
Wacker said it was already generating modest quantities of some proteins to provide Aleph Farms while they were developing the company, and that it would share more specifics about the project’s schedule as it neared completion.
Financial information was not provided by the companies.
