A Meaty Seed Round To Watch

Alternative meat has become one of the hottest sectors to watch with direct impact to sustainability (Image: Unsplash)

New Age Meats, a biotechnology company growing meat from animal cells, announced $2M in seed extension funding, bringing their total seed round to $4.7M. New Age Meats crafts meat to be tastier, safer, and more sustainable than meat made any other way.

Why does this matter?

• New Age Meats, like Impossible Foods and others in the space, is making meat for meat eaters — their mission is to build a more sustainable supply of protein for the planet.
• 45% of Earth’s land is used for grazing or growing feed crops for livestock — compare this to all the buildings, roads, and paved surfaces in the world, which only occupy less than 1% of Earth’s land surface.
• The global demand for meat is only increasing, outpacing human population growth. Not only is demand for meat increasing, but traditional methods of producing meat (livestock) are inefficient.
• New Age Meats brings to light the fact that industrial animal agriculture contributes around 15% of the earth’s total greenhouse gas emissions. Making meat from cells reduces greenhouse gases by 96% while using 99% less land, 96% less water, and 45% less energy.

What’s next?

• New Age Meats uses automation to optimize bioreactors and grow its meat faster, and funds will go towards implementing more of this automation, as well as robotics, to speed up both the research and development processes.
• New Age Meats is working toward building its pilot facility, scaling product development and production, and getting its first products to market. This will also decrease the retail price for its products.
• There has been a decrease in production costs for manufacturers, as well as an increase in companies using alternative protein to diversify their product lines. As a result, alternative protein is becoming more popular across the food industry.
• Investment in cell-based meat has already reached over $1 billion in 2020 so far, which is almost double what it was for all of 2019. The entire market for alternative protein is expected to grow to $17.9 billion by 2025.

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