Portfolio Company Meatable Unveil its Cultivated Pork Sausage

RNS Number : 1230T

Agronomics Limited

20 July 2022

Agronomics Limited

(“Agronomics” or the “Company”)

Portfolio Company Meatable Unveil its Cultivated Pork Sausage

Agronomics Limited (AIM:ANIC), a leading listed company focused on cellular agriculture, is pleased to announce that its existing portfolio company, the Dutch cultivated meat company Meatable B.V. (“Meatable”) has revealed the first images of its cultivated pork sausage product, created using real meat, produced differently. Images can be seen here. This marks a major milestone for the Dutch company as they approach wide-scale commercialisation, which they expect to occur in 2025, if not sooner.

Agronomics holds 4,859 shares in Meatable, representing an equity ownership of 5.84% on a fully diluted basis. Subject to audit, Agronomics carries this position in its accounts at a book value of €8.15 million, representing an unrealised gain on cost of €2.95 million, following Meatable’s completion of its US$ 47 million Series A financing announced in March 2021.

The full announcement is set out below with no material changes or adjustments:

Leading cultivated meat company Meatable reveals its groundbreaking pork sausages product for the first time

●    Industry-leading food company Meatable is developing cultivated pork and beef with groundbreaking technology

●    Meatable is on a mission to create real meat that can serve the planet’s growing appetite without harming the environment or animals in the process

●    Major milestone reached for the Dutch company as it reveals images of its pork sausages for the first time

●    Meatable expects to sell its first products to consumers in 2025 – if not sooner

20 July, Delft – Meatable, the industry-leading food company that is developing cultivated pork and beef with groundbreaking technology, is today revealing images of its pork sausage for the first time. The cultivated sausage is the first product to be announced by the Dutch company, which aims to create real meat that can serve the planet’s growing appetite without harming the environment or animals in the process.

The sausage of the future

The reveal of Meatable’s cultivated sausages marks a major breakthrough for the company. Since launching in 2018, Meatable has been developing and refining its process to grow cultivated meat using opti-ox™ technology, without the need for FBS (fetal bovine serum). The company only needs one single cell sample, taken harmlessly from an animal, to replicate the natural growth of muscle and fat to create real meat. In the last few months, huge steps have been taken by the team to create the cultivated sausages which have the same structure, texture, glossiness and pronounced pork flavour that customers know and love. The product even produces the signature sizzle in the pan, just like traditional sausages – this is because it isn’t like meat, it is real meat.

It takes only a few weeks to grow Meatable’s sausages. This demonstrates the potential of cultivated meat to deliver the delicious meat that consumers love and enjoy without the negative effects on the planet, with studies showing that cultivated meat could reduce the meat industry’s environmental impact by up to 92%. With 14% of the world’s global emissions caused by the farmed meat industry, Meatable believes cultivated meat will be essential to combating climate change and creating a healthier planet.

Creating a new food order

Meatable decided to create sausages to satisfy potential customers in Europe and the US with Germany alone comprising around 27% of the total volume of sausages consumed worldwide. Meatable hopes that its sausage will be the first step to making cultivated meat more accessible to the wider public.

However, as delicious as the sausages look, currently cultivated meat is not legal to sell in Europe. Meatable has been working closely with regulators in the Netherlands to support the passing of a motion that will look to enable the wider tasting of cultivated meat by the end of the year. As regulatory and safety standards develop over the next few years, Meatable hopes this will enable it to have its products widely on sale to consumers in 2025, if not sooner.

In the meantime, Meatable will continue to develop and optimise its meat with the support of its sensory panel as well as a team of world-renowned food scientists and chefs to ensure the final product boosts the right tastes and characteristics of traditional meat, as well as further the development of other products in the Meatable range.

Krijn de Nood, co-founder and CEO of Meatable, said: “This is a truly exciting moment for the entire Meatable team. To be able to see and cook our sausages for the first time was an incredible experience especially as my co-founder Daan and I were able to finally have our first taste. This was particularly exhilarating as we know that all of our hard work over the past four years has been successful in creating a real meat sausage that is indistinguishable from traditional pork sausages. We believe that cultivated meat is the future of food – meat that will satisfy the world’s appetites but without harming the planet or animals in the process. We can’t wait to enable more people to taste Meatable meat on the next step of our journey to create the new natural meat.”

Daan Luining, co-founder and CTO of Meatable, said: “Over the past four years, we’ve been constantly innovating and developing our technology to get it to this stage today where we can hear the sausages sizzle in a pan, see and, for Krijn and I, even taste this incredible product that we’ve created. I hope more people can taste it soon following the Dutch government’s motion to enable controlled tastings. This will ensure that people can experience that this isn’t just like meat, it is meat – 100% delicious meat, identical on every level, but without any of the drawbacks. This is one step on our journey to creating the new natural meat and I’m looking forward to seeing how the product develops before we can bring it to consumers in the next few years.”

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About Meatable

Meatable is an innovative, Dutch food company, aiming to deliver, at scale, the new natural, cultivated meat that looks like, tastes like, and has the nutritional profile of traditional meat. Its proprietary opti-ox™ technology enables Meatable to produce meat rapidly, sustainably, and without harming animals. Founded in 2018 by Krijn de Nood (CEO), Daan Luining (CTO), and Dr. Mark Kotter (principal inventor of opti-ox™technology), Meatable has brought together a team of experts with unique knowledge in fields including molecular biology, chemistry, tissue engineering, bioprocess development, food safety, and food science to create the new natural meat. Follow Meatable: LinkedIn,Twitter, Instagram, Facebook.

About Agronomics

Agronomics is a leading listed alternative proteins company with a focus on cellular agriculture and cultivated meat. The Company has established a portfolio of 22 companies at the Pre-Seed to Series C stage in this rapidly advancing sector. It seeks to secure minority stakes in companies owning technologies with defensible intellectual property that offer new ways of producing food and materials with a focus on products historically derived from animals. These technologies are driving a major disruption in agriculture, offering solutions to improve sustainability, as well as addressing human health, animal welfare and environmental damage. This disruption will decouple supply chains from the environment and animals, as well as being fundamental to feeding the world’s expanding population. A full list of Agronomics’ portfolio companies is available at https://agronomics.im/.

About Cellular Agriculture

Cellular Agriculture is the production of agriculture products directly from cells, as opposed to raising an animal for slaughter, or growing crops. This encompasses cell culture to produce cultivated meat and materials, and fermentation processes that harness a combination of molecular biology, synthetic biology, tissue engineering and biotechnology to massively simplify production methods in a sustainable manner.

Over the coming decades, the source of the world’s food supply traditionally derived from conventional agriculture is going to change dramatically. We have already witnessed the first wave of this shift with the consumer adoption of plant-based alternative proteins but today, we are on the cusp of an even bigger wave of change. This is being facilitated by advances in cellular agriculture. This change is necessary, given scientists claims that if we maintain existing animal protein consumption patterns, then we will not meet the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting warming to 1.5℃

AT Kearney, a global consultancy firm, projects that cultivated meat’s market share will reach 35% by 2040. This combined with the Good Food Institute’s estimate that a US $1.8 trillion investment will be required in order to produce just 10% of the world’s protein using this technology, means that we are on the cusp of a multi-decade flow of capital to build out manufacturing facilities. Funding in the field of cellular agriculture is accelerating, however still less than US$ 4 billion has been invested worldwide since the industry’s inception in 2016.

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