UK biotech manufacturer Clean Food Group (CFG) has raised £4.5 million in a funding round led by Clean Growth Fund and new investor New Agrarian, with the capital earmarked for scaling its fermentation facility in Knowsley, Liverpool. The company has also received a £700,000 non-dilutive grant from Innovate UK.
The Knowsley site, which CFG acquired in September 2025, holds one million litres of fermentation capacity and is positioned as what the company describes as the “world’s largest” facility dedicated to yeast-derived oils and fats. The new funding will be used to complete the site’s scale-up, expand production output, and advance commercialisation of CFG’s ingredients across food, cosmetics, and pet nutrition markets.
Fermentation-derived oils and fats
CFG was founded in 2022, following eight years of research, and produces oils and fats from food waste feedstocks using proprietary yeast strains. The resulting products are priced at parity with conventional agricultural alternatives and are designed as locally produced substitutes for tropical and agricultural oils. In 2025, its CleanOil 25 product received approval as a cosmetics ingredient in the UK, US, and Europe.
Existing backers SEED Innovations and ingredient group Döhler Group both participated in the round. Rodrigo Hortega de Velasco, Managing Partner at Döhler Ventures, said: “CFG has consistently demonstrated both the strength of its technology and the commercial potential of its sustainable oils and fats platform. The acquisition of the Knowsley facility marks a significant milestone, enabling production at a scale that brings these innovative products closer to widespread commercial reality.”
Supply chain resilience as an investment case
New Agrarian founder Jim Mellon, who also chairs Agronomics, cited supply chain vulnerability as a key driver. “War, climate volatility, and trade disputes are presenting a huge challenge to manufacturers; the ingredients we assumed would always be available are no longer guaranteed,” he explained.
“Clean Food Group is addressing this problem head-on, using scalable science and technology to build genuine resilience and sustainability into the way we produce and source key ingredients used in everything from food to cosmetics.”
CFG is not alone in targeting this space: Swedish company Melt&Marble, which raised $8.5 million in December 2025, and Estonia-based ÄIO are among the companies using precision fermentation to produce functional lipids as alternatives to animal and tropical fats.
CFG’s CFO Tom Ellen added: “The capital raised will enable the Company to bring on stream the world’s largest yeast-derived oils and fats facility and to deliver on our long-term vision for sustainable food manufacturing.”
