Hoxton Farms, the London-based biotech developing cultivated animal fat, opens on September 21st its first pilot facility in the center of London to advance research, enable industry scale-up production and develop prototypes with plant-based companies and supermarkets chains.
The company embarked on its journey in 2020, initially located just across the street from their new 14,000 square-foot facility in the Finsbury neighborhood, surrounded by apartment blocks and a traditional British pub on the street corner: “This is probably the last place people would expect to find a cultivated food production facility, but you can do it anywhere,” remarked Ed Steele, co-founder of Hoxton Farm, during a tour of the lab with Forbes. “We really like the idea of being close to consumers who are going to eat our products. We need them to understand what we’re doing the way that we’re producing meats that will be produced in the future. I don’t think you can demonstrate that to people. If you have a facility out in the middle of nowhere” Steele continued.
Founded by biologist Max Jamilly and mathematician Ed Steele, the duo decided to enter the cultivated meat space by focusing on solely producing cultivated fat, the component in food that the component in food that triggers the strongest cravings, as well as attracting investors who recognized the promising potential of their venture.
The new facility launch was a result of a $22 million Series A funding round in October 2022, led by Collaborative Fund and Fine Structure Ventures, with further investment from Systemiq Capital, AgFunder, MCJ Collective, and previous investors Founders Fund, BACKED VC, Presight Capital, CPT Capital and Sustainable Food Ventures.
Thanks to their expansion, two-thirds of the site is used as specialist cell culture laboratories, a food development kitchen, and an hardware workshop.
Secret weapon to scaling up production
The current production capacity of the company’s initial pilot plant can produce one tonne of cultivated fat annually. However, Steele mentioned that they could significantly increase production up to ten tonnes and more if they were to fully optimize efficiency of their bioreactors.
In the Hoxton Farm’s hardware workshop, bioengineers have been working on manufacturing its own custom in-house bioreactors, designed to optimise fat cell growth with much lower capital costs than industry-standard bioreactors. Steele explained: “(Differently from) When you grow (cultivated) muscle, you need to use special types of bioreactors that are very complicated to build and have never been scaled up before. In our case working with fat cells, we can go through the cells in a different way that’s much more efficient.” said Steele.
Many companies are trying to scale up their production by investing in huge bioreactors: “We’ve seen that companies have really, really struggled to do that so far. It takes a long time to optimize the conditions in the bioreactor and you basically start from scratch when you move up in size.” he remarked, and a recent investigation by WIRED inted at difficulties the American company Upside Foods might be having in reliably brewing tissue in huge bioreactors.
Steele said their small-size diy bioreactor could avoid useless million dollars investments, limits contamination and loss of batches.
Enhancing plant-based food
Currently, Hoxton Farm is excited about creating a cultivated alternative for pork belly fat, but aside of that the plans are to expand beyond pork fat and even reach chicken or fish fat equivalents.
While the technology for creating plant-based burgers or sausages is no longer groundbreaking, recent years have witnessed a shift away from exclusively branded plant-based products. Supermarkets’ in-house meatless product lines are now capturing a significant share of the market. “We’re targeting people who really enjoy the taste of meat: that’s what the plant based meat productst haven’t been able to crack,” said Steele , suggesting that one reason for the stagnation in the plant-based market is the inadequacy of product taste and juiciness.
Hoxton Farms is actively engaging with a diverse range of customers to collaboratively develop prototype hybrid meat products: “Both white label supermarkets, supermarket products and producers of those and the larger plant based meat companies and then the multinationals, they’re all desperate to use cultivated fat which is great for us,” he stressed.
The company’s remarkable advantage lies in the ability of just a few drops of cultivated fat to significantly enhance the taste and overall appeal of numerous plant-based products, all without significantly affecting their final price. This becomes especially advantageous in regions like the U.S. and Asia, where the regulatory environment already permits the commercialization of fully developed cultivated meat products, with prohibitive or high prices for an average consumer.
The company said that the first commercial scale pilot haven’t decided yet whether it’s first commercial plant will be based in the U.S., Asia or in the U.K. “For sure it won’t be in the center of London this time,” Steele joked.
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