REG - Agronomics Limited - Portfolio Company Update: Galy Co. Update

AgronomicsAnnouncement

18/07/2023 07:00

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RNS Number : 2787G  Agronomics Limited  18 July 2023

18 July 2023

Agronomics Limited

("Agronomics" or the "Company")

Portfolio Company Update: Galy Co. Enter 10-year, US$ 50 Million Partnership

Agronomics (ANIC:LSE), the leading listed company focused on the field of
cellular agriculture, is pleased to announce that portfolio company Galy Co.
("GALY") has entered a 10-year, US$ 50 million partnership with Japanese
manufacturer Suzuran Medical Inc. ("Suzuran") to use thousands of tons
annually of the startup's lab-grown cotton in its products. Suzuran has been
working with GALY since 2021 when they completed a proof-of-concept evaluating
the quality of the fibers. Under the new partnership, Suzuran
(https://www.suzuran-corp.com/)  will use the GALY (https://galy.co/)
 cotton, grown from cells instead of plants, in products such as cosmetic
cotton and cotton sheets, and medical products such as gauze and absorbent
cotton for medical and consumer use, according to Yasuhiro Kunieda, company
president.

GALY is a leading plant cell culture company with disruptive technology for
growing cotton (and other crops) from cells in a laboratory facility rather
than utilising traditional soil-based methods. It is headquartered in Boston,
US, with research and scale-up also based in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Agronomics first invested in GALY in 2020
(https://polaris.brighterir.com/public/agronomics/news/rns/story/wv1m8pw) ,
with a US$ 0.5 million investment, and again in 2022
(https://polaris.brighterir.com/public/agronomics/news/rns/story/x8ky5px) with
a further US$ 1 million investment. Agronomics carries this aggregate position
in its accounts at a book value of US$ 3.47 million, representing an
unrealised gain on cost of US$ 1.97 million.

Luciano Bueno, GALY's founder and CEO commented:

"It's huge, we believe it is the first-time lab-grown cotton will enter any
market worldwide. With all our success in our product development, solidifying
our partnership with Suzuran, and the industry interest across products, we're
in a very exciting spot right now, with hopes to commercialise in the next few
years"

Jim Mellon, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Agronomics said:

"We're delighted with GALY's progress in their mission to revolutionise cotton
production, safeguard our environment, and disrupt conventional agriculture.
GALY has successfully demonstrated its ability to produce cotton from plant
cells and Agronomics sees huge potential for other opportunities to arise from
this technology. We're looking forward to working with the team on their
exciting new growth phase."

About Galy

Founded in 2019, GALY is producing cotton grown from cells in a facility, not
plants in a field. They have developed a process to grow cotton (and other
products) in vitro that is 10x faster, uses 80% less resources, independent of
land or weather, and with the potential for 5x-10x higher margins than
traditional products.

About Agronomics

Agronomics is a leading listed 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 invest 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
improve food security for 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    SEC Newgate

 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         Bob Huxford

 Anthony Hughes
 Denham Eke           James Biddle          Harry Rees                      Michael Johnson       Charles Goodfellow

                                            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  agronomics@secnewgate.co.uk

 info@agronomics.im

 

 

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