NETHERLANDS— Meatable, a Dutch food technology company, has announced a significant biotechnological breakthrough that will get its product to cost parity with animal-based meat.
The company says a new advanced in its core primary patented Opti-Ox technology cuts cell differentiation time in half – the process that initially took 8 days will now take 4, which will be an industry record.
This means that the company will now require nearly half as many bioreactors to scale, cutting costs and enabling more efficient use of production space.
Additionally, the technology can convert pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) into premium fat and muscle tissue quicker and more efficiently.
This marks a crucial advancement in eatable’s technology and signals a significant stride toward the commercialization of cultivated meat products on a large scale.
In an interview, Meatable’s co-founder and chief technology officer Daan Luining said that the technology won’t affect the flavor as it has capability in differentiating cells into authentic fat and muscle tissues, achieving optimal fiber formation, protein content and fat accumulation.
“What we envision this to look like is a continuous stream of cells being produced in one phase of the production process, and then turned into muscles very efficiently. So the fewer days you need to keep the cells alive and, in a tank, the less capital expenditure and operating expenditure is needed in the entire process,” He added.
This comes as goof news to the cultivated meat industry, which despite advancements in technology, has experienced minimal progress since last year.
In addition to this progress, Luining mentioned that Meatable plans to expand into the U.S. market in the future. However, at present, the company’s primary focus is on collecting consumer feedback and launching a restaurant in Singapore later this year.
“This is why we are focused on Singapore because it’s rather small and doesn’t produce any food itself, so we have a unique opportunity to introduce our product and get feedback from consumers and have a picture of what the production process looks like throughout all of that.” He said.
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