Add Ivy Farm Technologies to the growing number of startups around the world creating cell-based meat. Ivy Farm announced itself at the end of last week, saying it plans to produce cultured sausages for markets and restaurants by 2023.
U.K.-based Ivy Farm Technologies is a spin-off from Oxford University, where co-founders Dr. Russ Tucker and Professor Cathy Ye met at the school’s Department of Engineering Science. Oxford provided the source of Ivy Farm’s key technology as well as seed funding through the University Challenge Seed Fund.
Like most cell-based meat companies, Ivy Farm uses a small number of cells taken from an animal and places those cells in a bioreactor, where they are grown and multiplied into meat. According to a press announcement sent to The Spoon, Ivy Farm says its technology is a “game changer” because of “a unique ‘scaffold’ system where the cells grow.” UPDATE: In an email Ivy Farm said that it’s approach to scaffolding involves creating a special surface that allows for the “continuous harvest” of cells (there’s no need to stop the system), at a lower cost vs. other technologies. Oxford owns the technology and has licensed it out to Ivy Farm.
The company wasn’t more specific about its scaffold technology (we reached out to them for more informationSee Update above), but focusing on different scaffolding techniques certainly isn’t unique for an alternative protein startup. Matrix Meats, Ecovative, and NovaMeat all tout different solutions to scaffolding alternative meats.
Ivy Farm’s goal of selling its cultured meat in stores and restaurants by 2023 is certainly ambitious seeing as the only country to approve the sale of cultured meat so far has been Singapore. Additionally, Ivy Farm is only now kicking off its fundraising, with the goal of raising raising £16m (~$22.5M USD) to create an R&D facility. That’s a lot to accomplish in less than two years.
Ivy Farm isn’t the only cell-based meat startup in the U.K. to get funding this year, or the only startup to be spun out of a university there. CellulaREvolution, which raised £1 million (~$1.37M USD at the time) in February, was borne out of research done at Newcastle University. CellulaREvolution has developed a synthetic peptide coating and smaller footprint bioreactor.
We are all for more startups developing cell-based meat, especially ones with big ambitious goals. Ivy Farms is certainly ambitious, now we’ll have to see if its technology can match its claims.
