HAIFA, ISRAEL — Ever After Foods Ltd., a subsidiary of Pluri Inc. and a producer of cultivated meat, has received a $10 million investment from Pluri Inc. Ever After Foods is Pluri’s majority-owned joint venture between Tnuva Food-Tech Incubator, according to the company.
The funding will accelerate Ever After Foods’ technology platform, which introduced its pilot version last year.
The company has developed a business-to-business version of its technology, which demonstrates the natural production of muscle and fat tissues for various animal cells, according to the company.
Ever After Foods’ bioreactors are powered by Pluri’s technology and may yield up to six times more protein and 700 times more lipids from each cell, according to the company. Pluri said it is extending the license field granted to Ever After Foods to add cultivated fish.
“Current cultivated meat platforms bound by stirred-tank technology simply can't produce meat parity products at the needed cost and scale to meet mass market demands,” said Eyal Rosenthal, chief executive officer of Ever After Foods. “Cultivated meat products are very sensitive to shear stress. When increasing the solid phase in stirred-tank bioreactors, the stirring mechanics are no longer effective and can damage the cultivated product.
“To produce cultivated meat at scale, current competing technologies demand infeasible bioreactor sizes of 20,000 liters and above. This results in even lower productivity, drastically higher COGS (cost of goods sold) and CAPEX (Capital Expenditure), placing cultivated meat commercialization at high risk.”
In Ever After Foods system, its cultivated meat products are fixed and decoupled from the media, which protects its products from mechanical stresses generated by any agitation, Rosenthal said.
“Our proprietary Edible-Packed Bed Bioreactor allows the production of cultivated meat with extremely high efficiency at scale,” Rosenthal said. “Instead of adapting cells to grow in the standard stirred-tank bioreactors, we developed a bioreactor adapted for natural cells, so meat that actually tastes and feels like meat can be grown at scale.”
Yaky Yanay, CEO and president of Pluri, added, "The current investment round in Ever After Foods is led by new global partners, and includes Tnuva's renewed commitment as well. We believe this validates Pluri’s strategy and underscores the quality of our technology and solutions. In just two years, our subsidiary has transformed the cultivated-meat sector, highlighting Pluri's innovative 3D cell expansion technology. Pluri is dedicated to the success of Ever After Foods, and this milestone reflects our ongoing commitment to innovation and excellence.”Enjoying this content? Learn about more disruptive startups on the Food Entrepreneur page.
