Extracellular has announced the opening of 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 10,000L 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 a 200L scale. 2,000L capacity is due to be operational by December 2023. The facility will hold multiple bioreactors from 50L to 5,000L that will be available to cultivated meat and seafood companies through Extracellular’s development, scale-up, and contract manufacturing services.

Founder and CEO of Extracellular, Dr. Will Milligan, said “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 commercialisation timelines, and de-risking the scale-up process by providing the much-needed manufacturing expertise. 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 is already supporting more than a dozen customers across 8 countries and 4 continents.

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

Extracellular is excited to work with new partners at this scale and welcomes inquiries from cultivated meat and seafood companies that need development and scale-up support.  Reach out to Extracellular using the green "Request Information" button below.