RCS - Agronomics Limited - Investee Company Update: CellX

AgronomicsAnnouncement

07/02/2023 17:00

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RNS Number : 2162P  Agronomics Limited  07 February 2023

7th February 2023

Agronomics Limited

("Agronomics" or the "Company")

CellX and Tofflon to Build China's First Pilot Production Facility for Cultivated Meat

Agronomics (ANIC:LSE), the leading listed company focused on the field of
cellular agriculture, is pleased to announce that Chinese cultivated meat
company CellX Limited ("CellX") has signed a strategic partnership agreement
with food manufacturing specialists Shanghai Tofflon Science and Technology
Co., Ltd. ("Tofflon") aiming to accelerate the scale-up of cultivated meat in
the Asian market with a new purpose-built facility.

●  CellX and Tofflon will build China's first pilot facility for cultivated
meat

●  The facility will allow CellX to scale up its suspension cell lines in
serum-free media at thousand-litre scale

●  The facility will be China's first "transparent food space" for
cultivated meat R&D, pilot production, and public tasting

Agronomics has invested a total of US$ 2,050,000 since CellX inception, first
investing US$ 50,000 in December 2020
(https://polaris.brighterir.com/public/agronomics/news/rns/story/w9502dr)
before investing a further US$ 2,000,000 in May 2022
(https://polaris.brighterir.com/public/agronomics/news/rns/story/w3k2qyr) .
The position is carried at US$ 2,538,117 million, including an unrealised gain
on cost of US$ 488,117 on the initial investment made in 2020, and accounts
for approximately 1.4% of the last published Net Asset Value of Agronomics
(31.12.22). Agronomics has an equity ownership of 5.14% on a fully diluted
basis in CellX.

The full announcement is set out below without any material changes.

Shanghai, February 5, 2023 - On February 1st, CellX (Shanghai Shiwei
Biotechnology Co., Ltd.) and Tofflon (Shanghai Tofflon Science and Technology
Co., Ltd.) signed a strategic partnership agreement with Xiaodong Zheng
(Chairman of Tofflon) and Ziliang Yang (Co-founder and CEO of CellX)
representing both companies. They will work together in the field of
cultivated meat, developing innovative equipment and building a pilot
production plant, as well as local and global facilities for commercial
production.

The two companies hope to leverage CellX's technical expertise in cultivated
meat and Tofflon's extensive biological equipment & production capability
to accelerate the scaling up of CellX's cultivated meat products.

During the signing event, CellX and Tofflon shared the rendering of China's
first pilot facility for cultivated meat. The plant will allow CellX to scale
up its suspension cell lines in serum-free media at thousand-litre scale. It
will also be equipped with Tofflons' digital and intelligent equipment
management systems.

The facility will host multiple thousand-litre bioreactors and will provide an
interactive space for consumers to taste CellX's demo products. It will be
China's first "transparent food space" for cultivated meat R&D, pilot
production, and public tasting, and will be completed within a year.

Mr. Zheng delivered a speech at the event, expressing his firm beliefs in the
cultivated meat industry and CellX's R&D progress.

"CellX is the leading cultivated meat company in China. It has built R&D
platforms across the four major technological pillars of cultivated meat -
cell line development, media optimization, novel bioprocess design, and end
product innovation. Cultivated meat is a promising application of
biotechnology in the field of food tech. With the experience and expertise
accumulated in the field of biopharma and food production, Tofflon will help
CellX to speed the scaling up of its cultivated meat products and it hopes to
contribute to a sustainable future for humankind", he said.

Mr Yang also shared CellX's latest R&D progress and strategic plans for
the future. "Besides being the world's largest meat market, China is also an
emerging leader in the field of bio-manufacturing. Thanks to its booming
biotech industry, China is quickly building a strong infrastructure and supply
chain. Tofflon is one of the world's leading providers of comprehensive
solutions for drug and food manufacturing, and their equipment and
technologies can be quickly applied to the field of cultivated meat.

"As part of our strategic partnership, the construction of a pilot facility is
the cornerstone of CellX's journey to scale up cultivated meat production in
China. I look forward to working with Tofflon to bring cultivated meat to
consumers in China and around the world", Yang said.

As a branch of cellular agriculture, cultivated meat produces animal meat
directly from animal cells in large-scale bioreactors. This new production
method is more efficient and sustainable than traditional factory farming
methods.

In the future, CellX and Tofflon will work together to bring cultivated meat
to consumers in China and around the world.

About Tofflon

Tofflon (Stock Code: SZ 300171) was founded in 1993 and listed on the China
Shenzhen Stock Exchange in 2011. Based in Shanghai, Tofflon provides process
support, core equipment, consumables, and system engineering solutions for
global drug and food manufacturing. Focusing on the study of drug
manufacturing science and integrating knowledge of drug processes and pharma
equipment, Tofflon can meet the needs of scientific research, pilot test, and
commercial production at various stages. Since its foundation, Tofflon has
supplied more than 3000 companies across the world.

 

Tofflon has established collaborations with pharmaceutical and biopharma
companies around the world and accumulated a wealth of pharmaceutical and
biopharma engineering technology, core equipment manufacturing technology, and
engineering design cases. By focusing on cutting-edge technologies in the
pharmaceutical industry, exploring innovative drug manufacturing models, and
building an advanced drug manufacturing platform, Tofflon has grown from a
"System Solution Supplier" to a "Smart Pharma Factory Builder".

 

About CellX

CellX is a cellular agriculture company based in Shanghai, working to bring
cultivated meat products to consumers in China and around the world. Its goal
is to provide a sustainable source of animal protein, better health for all
human beings, and improved animal welfare. Founded in 2020, CellX has built a
top R&D team of 40 and raised $15M+. The team focuses on building platform
technologies with a multi-species approach.

 

CellX is collaborating with top universities and leading companies around the
world to advance the commercialization of cultivated meat. The company is also
accelerating market launch and cultivated meat approval in the APAC region.

 

More information at www.cellx.cn (http://www.cellx.cn/)

 

About Agronomics

Agronomics is a leading listed alternative proteins company with a focus on
cellular agriculture and cultivated meat. The Company has established a
portfolio of over 20 companies in this rapidly advancing sector. It seeks to
secure minority stakes in companies owning technologies with defensible
intellectual property that offer new ways of producing food and materials with
a focus on products historically derived from animals. These technologies are
driving a major disruption in agriculture, offering solutions to improve
sustainability, as well as addressing human health, animal welfare and
environmental damage. This disruption will decouple supply chains from the
environment and animals and be fundamental to feeding the world's expanding
population. A full list of Agronomics' portfolio companies is available at
https://agronomics.im/.

 

About Cellular Agriculture

Cellular Agriculture is the production of agriculture products directly from
cells, as opposed to raising an animal for slaughter or growing crops. This
encompasses cell culture to produce cultivated meat and materials, and
fermentation processes that harness a combination of molecular biology,
synthetic biology, tissue engineering and biotechnology to massively simplify
production methods in a sustainable manner.

 

Over the coming decades, the source of the world's food supply traditionally
derived from conventional agriculture is going to change dramatically. We have
already witnessed the first wave of this shift with the consumer adoption of
plant-based alternative proteins but today, we are on the cusp of an even
bigger wave of change. This is being facilitated by advances in cellular
agriculture. This change is necessary, given scientists' claims that if we
maintain existing animal protein consumption patterns, then we will not meet
the Paris Agreement's goal of limiting warming to 1.5℃.

 

AT Kearney, a global consultancy firm, projects that cultivated meat's market
share will reach 35% by 2040. This combined with the Good Food Institute's
estimate that a US $1.8 trillion investment will be required in order to
produce just 10% of the world's protein using this technology, means that we
are on the cusp of a multi-decade flow of capital to build out manufacturing
facilities. Funding in the field of cellular agriculture is accelerating,
however, still, less than US$ 5 billion has been invested worldwide since the
industry's inception in 2016.

For further information please contact:

 Agronomics                                       Beaumont              Canaccord Genuity Limited        Cenkos                Peterhouse Capital    TB Cardew

 Limited                                          Cornish Limited                                        Securities Plc        Limited
 The Company                                      Nomad                 Joint Broker                     Joint Broker          Joint Broker          Public Relations
 Richard Reed                                     Roland Cornish        Andrew Potts                     Giles Balleny         Lucy Williams         Ed Orlebar

 Denham Eke                                       James Biddle          Harry Rees                       Michael Johnson       Charles Goodfellow    Alistair Walker

                                                                        Alex Aylen (Head of Equities)
 +44 (0) 1624 639396                              +44 (0) 207 628 3396  +44 (0) 207 523 8000             +44 (0) 207 397 8900  +44 (0) 207 469 0936  +44 (0) 20 7930 0777

 info@agronomics.im (mailto:info@agronomics.im)                                                                                                      +44 (0) 7738 724 630

                                                                                                                                                     agronomics@tbcardew.com (mailto:agronomics@tbcardew.com)

 

 

 

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