UK cultivated meat company Meatly has closed a £10.4 million Series A round to fund construction of a 20,000-litre bioreactor facility in London, which would become the largest cultivated meat production site in Europe. Fit-out begins immediately, with product releases expected in 2027.
The round brings total funding raised to £17.4 million, building on £7 million in seed capital from founding investor Agronomics and Pets at Home. Three new institutional investors joined the round: Oyster Bay Venture Capital, a Hamburg-based food and agtech fund; Clean Growth Fund, a UK climate tech specialist; and JamJar Investments, a London-based consumer fund whose backers include the founders of Innocent Drinks.
Pet food as the commercial entry point
Meatly’s production at the new facility will be directed at the UK pet food market, where it already holds a unique commercial position. The company received regulatory authorisation in the UK in 2024 and conducted a real-world retail trial in 2025, making it the first company in Europe to sell cultivated meat commercially.
Founded in 2022, Meatly has focused on reducing production costs as its primary technical challenge. In 2024, the company reported that it had brought the cost of its chemically defined, protein-free growth medium to £0.22 per litre. The following year, it reported a roughly tenfold reduction in bioreactor costs.
CEO Owen Ensor said: “This investment marks a powerful endorsement, not just of Meatly, but of Britain’s foodtech and biotech sectors. Meatly has one focus: to make commercially viable cultivated meat a reality. Over the last four years, Meatly’s pioneering team has systematically focused on reducing key costs and building the strongest possible technical foundation for growth. Now we have our own industry-leading technology, and we are ready to scale.”
Investor rationale
Connor Duffy, Investment Manager at Clean Growth Fund, cited the cost trajectory as central to the investment case: “Rethinking how we produce protein is an essential part of tackling the climate crisis. We’ve invested in Meatly because they are showing it’s possible to produce real meat cost-competitively and with a fraction of the environmental impact.”
Cost is the defining challenge
Jim Mellon, Executive Chairman at Agronomics and founding investor in Meatly, added: “The market opportunity for sustainable and high-quality protein is enormous, but success in this category ultimately comes down to one thing: bringing down the cost of production. The team at Meatly has consistently cracked this challenge, reducing costs by building their own bioreactors, developing their own culture medium, and staying focused on what it takes to scale.”
Ensor concluded: “This step will allow us to prove commercial viability at scale and start to continually produce Meatly Chicken for the UK pet food market.”
