Singapore cell-cultivated seafood firm Avant Proteins winds up local operations

Singapore-based cell-cultivated seafood company Avant Proteins has begun winding up its operations in the city-state, becoming the latest company to exit Singapore’s novel food ecosystem despite the country’s early regulatory leadership in approving cell-cultivated meat.

• Avant Proteins declared a voluntary winding-up of its Singapore business in January 2026 due to liabilities, according to notices in the Government Gazette.
• The company said it would transition operations out of Singapore after completing research and pilot-scale activities.
• The exit followed earlier pullbacks by Eat Just and consolidation involving Shiok Meats, highlighting ongoing scale-up challenges.

According to The Straits Times, Avant Proteins declared on January 26 that it was voluntarily winding up its Singapore business due to liabilities, as disclosed in a notice published in Singapore’s Government Gazette. In a LinkedIn post the following day, the company said it planned to transition its operations out of Singapore.

Avant Proteins served as the research arm of Hong Kong-founded Avant, which was established in 2018 and branded itself as Asia’s first cell-cultivated fish company. While the Singapore entity moved toward closure, Avant Meats Company, the group’s Hong Kong-based parent, remained registered as a private company limited by shares as of February 10, according to Hong Kong’s companies registry.

In its January 27 LinkedIn post, Avant said it had established its presence in Singapore in 2021 through a collaborative project with the Agency for Science, Technology and Research’s Bioprocessing Technology Institute, operating a laboratory at Biopolis focused on bioprocess optimization. The company said the project was completed as planned and provided valuable technical insights.

According to the post, Avant subsequently scaled its activities at a pilot facility in Woodlands, located at Tee Yih Jia Food Manufacturing’s TYJ Food Hub. The company said the facility was used to demonstrate its technologies and products to investors, partners, customers, peers, and members of the public, and also served as a platform for public education about future animal protein technologies.

Avant said it had since commercialized Zellulin Nature-Coded Peptides, a skincare ingredient developed using cultivated fish cells, and was continuing work toward regulatory approval of its cultivated fish products with the Singapore Food Agency. The company thanked the Singapore Economic Development Board, its local team, and other partners for supporting its activities in Singapore, describing the country as a “supportive and vibrant ecosystem for food tech.”

“As the cultivated meat industry has evolved, so have we,” the company wrote, adding that it would take its “next step to support the industry in a different way” by transitioning operations out of Singapore.

The exit marked at least the third high-profile setback for Singapore’s cell-cultivated meat sector in recent years. California-based Eat Just paused cell-cultivated meat production in Singapore, while local startup Shiok Meats merged with Umami Bioworks, which focused on marine cell cultivation, according to The Straits Times.

The newspaper reported that the sector has struggled to gain commercial traction since 2023, facing rising costs, difficulties scaling production, and a slowdown in investment. In a 2024 response to The Straits Times, Avant co-founder and chief executive Carrie Chan said investors had become “more conservative” amid broader economic conditions, particularly toward pre-revenue companies working with technologies that were difficult to scale quickly.

Avant expanded into Singapore in 2021 with the aim of scaling food-grade cell-cultivated fish products, initially through its collaboration with ASTAR’s Bioprocessing Technology Institute. ASTAR told The Straits Times that the collaboration concluded as planned after two years, after which Avant established its own pilot facility in Woodlands.

Not all cell-cultivated meat companies have retreated from Singapore. Australia-based firm Vow told The Straits Times that its sales had grown significantly since launching its cultivated products in mid-2024, highlighting divergent outcomes within the sector.