RCS - Agronomics Limited - Portfolio Company Meatable Update

AgronomicsAnnouncement

10/10/2022 07:00

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RNS Number : 2577C  Agronomics Limited  10 October 2022

10 October 2022

 

Agronomics Limited (https://agronomics.im/)

("Agronomics" or the "Company")

 Portfolio Company Meatable Announces Partnership with Commercial Scale
Cultivated Meat Manufacturer Esco Aster

 

Agronomics (AIM:ANIC), the leading listed company focused on the field of
cellular agriculture, is pleased to announce that portfolio company Meatable
B.V. ("Meatable") has announced a partnership with the world's only licensed
large scale contract manufacturer for cultivated meat, Esco Aster, based in
Singapore. This partnership will facilitate the production of Meatable's
cultivated pork products, which are aiming to initially be launched in
selected restaurants in Singapore in 2024, subject to meeting Singaporean
regulatory requirements.

 

Agronomics holds 4,859 shares in Meatable, representing an equity ownership of
5.84% on a fully diluted basis.

 

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

 

Cultivated meat leader Meatable announces partnership with the world's only
licensed manufacturer Esco Aster to become first cultivated pork producer in
Singapore

 

●    Industry-leading food company Meatable is announcing its first
international expansion to Singapore in partnership with industry-leading
Contract Manufacturer Esco Aster

●    The partnership will enable Meatable to produce cultivated pork,
including dumplings, sausages and other products for customers - a first for
the Southeast Asian country

●    Huge steps have been taken to create cultivated pork that has the
same structure, texture, juiciness and pronounced pork flavour that customers
know and love

●    Meatable aims to meet the demand for meat that doesn't harm the
planet, animals or humans

 

10 October, Delft: Meatable, the innovative Dutch food tech company that is on
a mission to deliver cultivated meat at scale, is partnering with Esco Aster,
the first and only commercially licensed cultivated meat manufacturer, as part
of its first international expansion to Singapore. The partnership will see
the two companies collaborate to produce cultivated pork, with the aim to have
products ready for launch in selected restaurants in 2024. This marks the next
step in Meatable's mission to create meat that serves the planet's growing
appetite without harming people, animals or the environment.

 

Meatable was founded in the Netherlands in 2018 with the aim to produce
cultivated meat that looks like, tastes like, and has the nutritional profile
of traditional meat, to serve the planet's growing appetite for meat without
harming people, animals or the environment. The company is currently focusing
on developing cultivated pork, including sausages and dumplings, to make
cultivated meat more accessible to the wider public.

 

Meatable's first international expansion

Meatable is partnering with Esco Aster in Singapore to enable it to bring its
first products to market, most likely starting with cultivated pork dumplings
and sausages. Meatable chose the Southeast Asian country for its first
international expansion as it is a leading food and agritech hub. Singapore
was the first country to approve cultivated meat in 2020 with Esco Aster's
facility, as part of its 30 by 30 (https://www.ourfoodfuture.gov.sg/30by30)
strategy. Singapore aims to build up its agri-food industry's capability and
capacity by producing 30% of its nutritional needs locally and sustainably by
2030. Currently, the country imports 90% of its food
(https://www.sfa.gov.sg/docs/default-source/publication/sg-food-statistics/singapore-food-statistics-2021.pdf)
, with each citizen consuming an average of 62kg
(https://www.sfa.gov.sg/docs/default-source/publication/sg-food-statistics/singapore-food-statistics-2021.pdf)
of meat annually. In 2020 alone, over 123,000 metric tonnes of pork were
consumed in Singapore.

 

Esco Aster was founded in Singapore in 2017 and is currently the first and
only production facility worldwide to obtain regulatory approval to produce
cultivated meat products in Singapore. Its first-in-class cultivated meat
production facility, combined with industry-leading scientists and food safety
specialists, enables the acceleration of proof-of-concept to market.

 

Together, the two companies will produce cultivated pork on a small scale by
2024 for restaurants with the aim to have products on sale in supermarkets by
2025, with Esco Aster enabling Meatable in developing, upscaling and realising
its first consumer products. It helps that both companies are aligned on the
mission to have a positive impact on the global meat industry, starting in
Singapore, but with plans to expand across the world as and when legislation
for this nascent sector develops.

 

The world's first cultivated pork dumplings

To address the Singaporean consumer, Meatable is working on the development of
several pork products, including cultivated pork dumplings, a world-first for
the cultivated meat industry. The global dumpling market is poised to grow by
$4.01bn between 2021 and 2025
(https://sg.news.yahoo.com/global-dumplings-market-expected-grow-114200056.html)
. To serve this demand, Meatable is working closely with Singaporean chefs, to
develop great-tasting bespoke pork, specifically for the Asian market. The
team has taken huge steps in the last few months to create cultivated meat
products which have the same structure, texture, juiciness and pronounced pork
flavour that customers know and love.

 

The aim is that Meatable's dumplings, and other cultivated pork products
including sausages and mince, will be the perfect choice for local partners in
Singapore and the wider Asian market who are looking to diversify their
consumer offerings with a tasty, healthy, cultivated meat which is produced
locally while staying true to the local cuisine.

 

Creating meat without harm

Meatable's proprietary opti-ox™ technology will revolutionise how cultivated
meat is produced in what is predicted to become a $25 billion industry by
2030. The company only needs one single cell sample, taken harmlessly from an
animal, to replicate the natural growth of muscle and fat to create real meat,
in what Meatable believes to be the fastest process in the field, to grow the
pork needed for its sausages and dumplings. Meatable's technology enables it
to create cultivated meat without the need for FBS (foetal bovine serum),
whilst at the same time using only a fraction of the resources from energy to
water.

 

In the meantime, Meatable is going to work closely with Singaporean food
regulators to ensure its pork dumplings meet regulatory requirements as it
gears up for production. As well, the wider team will continue to develop and
optimize its dumplings and sausages to ensure the final products offer the
right tastes and characteristics of traditional meat and satisfy the world's
growing demand for meat that doesn't cause harm.

 

Krijn de Nood, co-founder and CEO of Meatable, said: "At Meatable we strongly
believe that cultivated meat is the future of food, in order to produce meat
sustainably and as local as possible. To do that it's imperative that we
provide a wide variety of products to cater for all cuisines, worldwide. Given
Singapore's status as a pioneer of cultivated meat, we're delighted to be
partnering with Esco Aster to begin production of our cultivated pork products
with the aim to launch in restaurants in 2024. Our team has been working
closely with the country's butchers and chefs to develop the perfect
cultivated pork dumplings and it was incredible to recently taste the
dumplings and know that we have created something indistinguishable from
traditional meat - because it is real meat. Along with our sausages, we have
made great strides in recent months to create products that will satisfy the
world's appetites without harming the planet or animals in the process."

 

Xiangliang Lin, CEO at Esco Aster, said: "Meatable has emerged as one of the
world's leading companies in developing cultivated meat. We're delighted to be
partnering with them to facilitate their launch in Singapore and to enable the
business to start producing cultivated pork for customers. With our scientific
expertise, operational know-how and enabling technologies, we believe that we
can help companies reach their milestones and advance to the next step of
cultivated meat production with market approval at scale. We're excited about
the potential for cultivated meat to transform how we feed the world and we're
looking to expand our facilities within and outside of Singapore to enable
more companies like Meatable across this space."

Hans Huistra, COO of Meatable, said: "We're excited to work closely with Esco
Aster and the Singaporean regulators as we gear up to launch our first
products for restaurant launch in 2024. Over the past four years, we've been
constantly innovating and developing our technology to get it to the stage
where we can perfectly recreate some of the meat products we all know and
love. Esco Aster will enable us in developing, upscaling and realizing our
first consumer products, together we will make a positive impact on the
Singaporean meat industry.

About Meatable:

Meatable (https://www.meatable.com/) is an innovative, Dutch food company,
aiming to deliver, at scale, the new natural
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHrorhYqcKg) , cultivated meat that looks
like, tastes like, and has the nutritional profile of traditional meat. Its
proprietary opti-ox™ technology enables Meatable to produce meat rapidly,
sustainably, and without harming animals. Founded in 2018 by Krijn de Nood
(CEO), Daan Luining (CTO), and Dr. Mark Kotter (principal inventor of opti-ox
technology), Meatable has brought together a team of experts with unique
knowledge in fields including molecular biology, chemistry, tissue
engineering, bioprocess development, food safety, and food science to create
the new natural meat. Follow Meatable (https://www.meatable.com/) : LinkedIn
(https://www.linkedin.com/company/itsmeatable/) , Twitter
(https://twitter.com/itsmeatable) , Instagram
(https://www.instagram.com/itsmeatable/) , Facebook
(https://www.facebook.com/meetMeatable/) .

 

About Esco Aster:

Esco Aster is a homegrown company rooted in Singapore  and currently the
first and only production facility in the world to obtain regulatory approval
by a government agency and is ISO 22000 certified, recognised internationally,
to produce cultivated meat products for commercial manufacturing and sales in
Singapore. Esco Aster, using its AsterMavors(®) manufacturing platform and
linearly scalable bioreactor farms, aims to produce proteins which are mass
market consumer friendly, environmentally sustainable and tasty across ages
and culture groups, all without harming the animal. In line with their vision
to become more self-sufficient and have 30% of domestic food produced locally,
Esco Aster is gearing up for further expansion to provide regulatory-approved
manufacturing platforms worldwide as well as market access via our channels
and partners in ASEAN.

Follow Esco Aster: LinkedIn
(https://www.linkedin.com/company/esco-aster/mycompany/) , Youtube
(https://www.youtube.com/c/EscoAsterPteLtd) , Email
(mailto:mail@escoaster.com)

 

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 22 companies at the Pre-Seed to Series C stage 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, as
well as being fundamental to feeding the world's expanding population. A full
list of Agronomics' portfolio companies is available
at https://agronomics.im/ (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 $1.8 trillion investment will be required in
order to produce just 10% of the world's protein using this technology, means
that we are on the cusp of a multi-decade flow of capital to build out
manufacturing facilities. Funding in the field of cellular agriculture is
accelerating, however still less than US$ 4 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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