RCS - Agronomics Limited - Portfolio Company VitroLabs Update

AgronomicsAnnouncement

06/10/2022 07:00

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RNS Number : 9230B  Agronomics Limited  06 October 2022

6 October 2022

 

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

("Agronomics" or the "Company")

 Portfolio Company VitroLabs Appoints Anthony Chow and Martin Avetisyan to
its Board of Directors

 

Agronomics (AIM:ANIC), the leading listed company focused on the field of
cellular agriculture, is pleased to announce that Agronomics Co-founder and
investment advisor, Anthony Chow, has been appointed to the board of directors
for VitroLabs Inc. ("VitroLabs"). VitroLabs is the Bay-Area based
biotechnology company focused on producing leather via its innovative and
unique cell culture process. Its technology utilises a tissue engineering
process to create genuine hides directly from animal cells for leather
products. The global luxury leather goods market is a US$ 48 billion
opportunity and, following its product development partnership with Kering,
VitroLabs is set to become the world's first company to commercialise
cultivated leather.

 

Agronomics holds 2,683,894 shares in VitroLabs, representing an equity
ownership of 11.2% on a fully diluted basis following its investments in
September 2021
(https://polaris.brighterir.com/public/agronomics/news/rns/story/wkl45vx) ,
February 2020
(https://polaris.brighterir.com/public/agronomics/news/rns/story/ryz319w) and
October 2019.
(https://polaris.brighterir.com/public/agronomics/news/rns/story/xez8qzx)
Agronomics currently carries this position in its accounts at an unaudited
book value of US$ 12.8 million, representing an unrealised gain on cost of
US$ 2.25 million. Based on the last unaudited Net Asset Value ("NAV") as
at 30 June 2022, the VitroLabs position represents 7.1% of NAV.

 

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

 

VitroLabs Appoints Anthony Chow and Martin Avetisyan to its Board of Directors

Lance Kizer joins company as new Chief Technology Officer

[Milpitas, California-October 5, 2022] VitroLabs Inc, the California based
biotech company leading the commercialization of cell cultivated animal
leather, announces the appointment of two new members to its Board of
Directors-Anthony Chow, Co-Founder of Agronomics; and Martin Avetisyan, Chief
Growth Officer and member of the Executive Board at FARFETCH. Chow and
Avetisyan join VitroLabs CEO & Co-Founder Ingvar Helgason to form the
three-person Board. Together, they bring expertise in developing new
biotechnologies in cell therapeutics and cellular agriculture, as well as
global growth, acquisition, and expansion in luxury, to the company. In May,
VitroLabs announced its long-standing product development partnership with
Kering and closing its series A funding round, raising $46 million to date.

 

VitroLabs also recently appointed Lance Kizer, former Co-Founder and Chief
Science Officer at Cana Technologies, to its executive team as Chief
Technology Officer. With extensive experience scaling products for
commercialization in the foodtech, industrial biochemical, and synthetic
biology spaces, Kizer will lead VitroLabs' R&D team in driving product
development and scale up to bring the world's first cell cultivated leather to
market.

 

"I am extremely pleased to have such a strong leadership team at the helm at
VitroLabs. Lance, Anthony, and Martin's unique backgrounds bring a strong
addition of product development, scaling commercialization, growing biotech
innovations, and developing businesses in luxury to the company. We are now
better positioned than ever before to meet our ambitious goals as we enter the
next chapter," says CEO & Co-Founder Ingvar Helgason. "Brands today want
the nobility and functionality of real leather, but with less impact on the
planet," Helgason adds. "Our team has been deep in R&D to come up with
just the solution needed-a true leather replacement that changes the source of
leather without changing leather itself. Within the foreseeable future, we are
ushering in a new generation of real animal leather that is luxurious,
bespoke, and made without the heavy and unsustainable toll on our planet."

 

About Anthony Chow

Anthony Chow is a co-founder of Agronomics, a leading investor in cellular
agriculture, and has worked closely with UHNW investor, Jim Mellon, investing
in early-stage opportunities with a focus on biotechnology and pharma for over
13 years. He serves as a Board member of several companies in the field of
cellular agriculture including SuperMeat, VitroLabs, Formo, Onego, and
California Cultured; and is a board observer of Meatable and Solar Foods.

 

About Martin Avetisyan

Martin Avetisyan is a serial entrepreneur, growth executive, and tech
investor. He is the Chief Growth Officer and Executive Board Member at
FARFETCH. Being a true material science enthusiast, Martin is thrilled to
serve on VitroLabs' Board of Directors, bringing extensive experience
accelerating global growth through operations as well as architecting
strategic partnerships around the world. He was previously the founder and CEO
at iMall, an awardwinning fashion marketplace, which was acquired by Farfetch
in 2015.

 

About Lance Kizer

Lance Kizer is an experienced founder with a demonstrated history of
successfully scaling big ideas into reality for start-ups in the synthetic
biology, industrial biochemical, and foodtech industries. As Co-Founder and
CSO of Cana Technologies, Lance led the development of a technology to
reconstruct on-demand any beverage in a home consumer electronic device using
a universal flavor chemistry, enabling a novel method of distributing
beverages with lower environmental impact and no single-use packaging. Part of
the founding team and Vice President of Research and Development at Ripple
Foods, which was founded to drive the adoption of more sustainable products in
the consumer packaged goods space, Lance led the successful build out of the
company, development of a novel protein production process, and national
launches of several plant-based dairy products that scaled into a food brand
with multiple product lines available in thousands of stores nationwide.

 

Before starting up Ripple, Lance led research and development projects at
Amyris, Inc. where he scaled and commercialized biochemicals produced via
fermentation processes. Product highlights include an antimalarial compound
that is now used to make more than 100 million treatments annually and
sustainable cosmetic ingredient alternatives that were Amyris' first
profitable product lines. Lance earned his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at
the University of California, Berkeley where he specialized in applying
systems biology to microbial strains engineered to produce value added
chemicals from sugar feedstocks.

 

About Ingvar Helgason

Where fashion, technology, and sustainability intersect, you will find
venture-backed VitroLabs and its Founder & CEO, Ingvar Helgason.
Originally from Reykjavik, Iceland, Ingvar's first venture, Ostwald Helgason,
was a fashion brand that he co-founded in 2006 and scaled to distribution in
23 countries worldwide. Being drawn to the technology side of the fashion
industry, he went on to co-found WOAH, a cloud ERP platform for apparel
companies, helping 500+ brands and manufacturers speed up processes, reduce
waste, and improve profitability. WOAH was sold in 2018. Ingvar's commitment
to sustainability and belief that biotech companies have the opportunity to
lead the way in changing how companies produce materials and build supply
chains is the foundation upon which VitroLabs' mission stemmed. The company is
supported by investors including Kering, Leonardo DiCaprio, Khosla Ventures,
and Agronomics; and has received recognition in top-tier press outlets
including Vogue Business, Vogue Italia, BBC, The Business of Fashion,
Bloomberg News, and Forbes.

 

About VitroLabs

VitroLabs, founded in 2016 and headquartered in Milpitas, California, is a
biotech company developing a scalable tissue engineering platform for the
efficient and environmentally friendly production of leather from only a few
cells. Combining advanced tissue engineering processes with proprietary
advances to achieve commercial scale, VitroLabs is on a mission to produce
cell cultivated leather that achieves the look, feel and performance of
traditional leather without compromise. The cultivated leather process
involves taking a one-time collection of cells from an animal, which then
grows in a nutrient-rich environment. Without ever going back to the animal
again, the cells grow, divide, and form into tissue. The composition of the
material achieves the complexity of traditional hides, containing a variety of
proteins that make up a durable and luxurious material when finished, but
without the need to go to animals as an ongoing source of hides. The process
is more environmentally sustainable and favorable for animal welfare than that
which is used to produce traditional leather. For more information, visit
www.vitrolabsinc.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 24 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://clicktime.symantec.com/368cVqxx3R6vTFuHpf6MSE66Gi?u=https%3A%2F%2Fagronomics.im%2F)
.

 

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 Limited                               Beaumont Cornish Limited  Canaccord Genuity Limited        Cenkos  Securities Plc   Peterhouse Capital Limited  TB Cardew
 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                       Max Gould                Charles Goodfellow          Alistair Walker

                                                                            Alex Aylen (Head of Equities)    Michael Johnson
 +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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