Meatable teams up with Royal DSM

The two Dutch companies have entered into a joint development agreement. DSM and Meatable will work on the development of meat-like taste and texture of the final product. However, the main focus of the collaboration is the cost-effective production of growth media. Growth media is currently estimated to account for 50-90% of the production cost of cultured meat.

Wim Klop, Vice President DSM Biotechnology Center, says, ‘’Protein is an essential part of a balanced diet and vital for good health. Yet its production has a big environmental footprint. With the world population expected to grow to 10 billion people by 2050, a wide variety of solutions for more sustainable proteins will be needed. Cultivated meat is one of those promising, innovative protein solutions in which DSM invests. Our commitment goes way beyond investing in Meatable through DSM Venturing. With this joint development agreement DSM will contribute its unique competencies in biotechnology, such as fermentation, analysis and production scale-up to help make the science of cultivated meat a reality.”

“With traditional animal farming alone, we will not be able to meet the growing demand for meat worldwide; we need breakthrough solutions. Cultivated meat has the potential to provide the growing world population with the protein source many people love – meat – using an efficient and sustainable production process that respects animal health and welfare,” says Krijn de Nood, CEO and co-founder of Meatable. “Joining forces with DSM, a global leader in biotechnology, will accelerate our research and development trajectory significantly. Together, we aim to develop the right nutritional ingredients in a fundamentally more cost effective and scalable process, to become the leading consumer choice for cultivated meat.”

DSM Venturing, the venture capital arm of Royal DSM, was a participant in the consortium of funders of Meatable’s recent raise of US$47m in venture capital.