Extracellular opens Europe’s largest contract pilot facility for cultivated meat and seafood

Extracellular has announced that it has opened Europe’s largest contract pilot facility dedicated to cultivated meat and seafood production at its Bristol site in the UK, with the ambition of driving the industry closer to commercial scale.

Cultivated meat offers slaughter-free meat with a significantly reduced climate, water and land use footprint. Despite the industry’s potential, cultivated meat producers are facing immense challenges scaling from lab-scale to commercial-scale, coined as 'crossing the valley of death', due to the extensive costs and extended timelines of developing their own pilot scale facilities. Extracellular’s facility will provide the industry with the pivotal scale-up and manufacturing services required to propel the industry to commercial scale.

A total facility capacity of 10,000 liters is planned for Extracellular’s pilot facility in the UK, with a production capacity of up to 50 tons of cultivated meat per year with existing capabilities, and up to 100 tons per year with predicted future capabilities. Extracellular’s pilot facility operates as a food-grade production facility, and is currently operational at 200-liter scale; 2,000-liter capacity is due to be operational by December 2023. The facility will hold multiple bioreactors from 50-5,000 liters that will be available to cultivated meat and seafood companies through Extracellular’s development, scale-up and contract manufacturing services.

“The vision for the facility is to eliminate the need for cultivated meat companies to develop pilot-scale facilities altogether, saving each company millions of pounds in CAPEX, cutting years out of their commercialization timelines, and de-risking the scale-up process by providing the much-needed manufacturing expertise," said Dr Will Milligan, Founder & CEO. "This will allow cultivated meat companies to focus on their goals of developing great consumer products at achievable prices."

The intermediate- and mid-scale capabilities established at the new contract pilot facility build on Extracellular’s extensive expertise with a variety of animal cell lines. Extracellular will be able to support companies from around the world from its site in the UK, and are already supporting more than a dozen customers across eight countries and foiur continents.

Future facility expansion plans by Extracellular to support the development and commercialisation of cultivated meat includes dedicated scale-up sites in strategic geographies, including in Asia and the Amercias, in the coming years.