Nordic Foodtech VC urges cultivated meat companies to show a fundable route to market

Cultivated meat companies need to give investors clearer evidence of products, customer demand and achievable commercial milestones, speakers told the Cultured Meat Symposium in Amsterdam, where developers and investors debated how to finance the move from research into production.

• Investors seek tangible products and achievable commercial milestones.
• Panelists debate hybrids, pet food and cosmetics as routes to revenue.
• Shared research and industrial partnerships could reduce development costs.

“Dream is no longer a business model,” said Lauri Reuter of Nordic Foodtech VC. “So you need to show the product, and many of the companies have not quite been there.”

Speaking during Investment, Partnerships and the Next Business Model, moderated by Petra Vossenberg of AtVenture Platform, Reuter said his firm had not yet invested in cultivated meat. Although he remained convinced of the technology’s potential, he wanted companies to demonstrate steps that could attract investment before their longer-term ambitions were realized.

“We need sort of achievable steps, fundable steps,” he said.

Those steps could include applications in personal care or pharmaceuticals, where cell cultivation technologies might generate revenues while development for food continued. Reuter argued that the challenge was to identify a credible sequence of investments rather than assume an entirely new funding model was required.

Ira van Eelen, Co-founder of Respect Farms and Cellular Agriculture Netherlands, challenged the suggestion that the sector’s original ambitions had been unrealistic. Companies had spent too much developing capabilities separately, purchasing expensive equipment and duplicating work that could have benefited from shared research, she argued.

“They were not bad plans; they were terrific plans,” she said.

Van Eelen also questioned whether reproducing a steak should remain the immediate benchmark for commercial progress. Cultivated cells could contribute to burgers, sausages and sauces without supplying every component of the finished product.

“He’s looking for a steak, and I can’t give him a steak yet,” she said of Reuter. “Maybe a hamburger.”

At cultivated ingredient inclusion levels of 20-30%, van Eelen said developers could already make appealing products. Whether those ingredients reached customers would depend on the value they brought to the formulation.

“And for me, that’s a good enough steak right now,” she said.

During an audience exchange about hybrids, Reuter asked whether conventional meat could provide the same improvement to a plant-based product. The question brought the discussion back to the alternatives already available to manufacturers, and what a cultivated ingredient would need to offer to win their business.

Jaco van der Merwe, Managing Director of Cultivate at Scale in Maastricht, said companies needed to devote more attention to customers alongside their technical development. The open-access facility supports animal cell processes across applications including food, pet food and personal care.

“Maybe there should be more emphasis and attention to mapping the market and demonstrating that there is a real demand and a need for the product out there,” he said.

For the facility, establishing robust cell culture and scale-up processes was a common requirement across those markets. Van der Merwe considered earlier commercial applications a practical option for companies facing lengthy development and regulatory pathways for food.

John-Felipe Murphy, who works on scale-up and regulation at Imperial College London’s Bezos Centre for Sustainable Protein and Microbial Food Hub, identified private investment, public research funding and commercial revenue as three principal ways to support development.

He pointed to cultivated meat companies pursuing pet food, media suppliers serving biopharma and developers exploring cosmetics. Revenue from these activities could help finance further research, although companies also had to consider whether expansion into other markets diverted attention from their original objectives.

Van Eelen cautioned that medical applications could encourage production methods whose costs remained unsuitable for food.

“If we stay led by medicine, then we will keep on having steaks that are way too expensive for your plate,” she said.

She encouraged developers to work with agricultural equipment suppliers and other established businesses accustomed to food production economics. Respect Farms was investigating a distributed manufacturing model using multiple smaller cultivation units, challenging the assumption that lower costs necessarily required very large facilities.

Van der Merwe said industrial partners could also improve a project’s credibility with investors by contributing engineering and manufacturing expertise. He cited media development as an area where specialist suppliers had helped companies address production costs.

Murphy identified opportunities for shared research on common technical obstacles, including adapting fish cell lines for suspension growth. He also pointed to information sharing through the UK’s cell-cultivated products regulatory sandbox, where participants had been willing to contribute when there was a clear benefit.

The discussion followed an opening update from Respect Farms Co-founder Ralf Becks, who said the company was scaling up to a third production unit at its farm site near Delft. Van Eelen said the company was also planning a tasting on a farm in 2027.

‍If you liked this, check these out...

• Invest-NL warns Dutch food biotech could lose ground as companies struggle to finance commercial production

• BLUU and Cultivate at Scale launch Europe’s first industrial platform for cell-cultured marine ingredients

• Ivy Farm reveals UK pet food approval for cultivated Wagyu at FPP Amsterdam