Dutch cultivated meat company Meatable has been awarded €7.6 million as part of the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO) Innovation Credit program.
RVO’s Innovation Credits are designed to support “innovative development projects with considerable technological risks and excellent market prospects”. Meatable intends to use the funding to improve productivity and reduce costs as it moves towards commercialisation. The company will work as a partner to the conventional meat industry in order to roll out cultivated meat products at scale.
Meatable previously raised $35 million last year in a funding round led by Agronomics. The company said at the time that it would use the capital to accelerate the launch of its cultivated pork products.
Last month, Meatable announced that it had joined the APAC Society for Cellular Agriculture. The society was founded as a coalition of Asian cultivated meat and seafood companies, but has now opened membership to all companies with business strategies in the region. Meatable qualifies as its cultivated pork products are currently pending regulatory approval from the Singapore Food Agency (SFA).
“Great collaboration”
In April, Meatable made history as the first company to hold an officially approved cultivated meat tasting in the European Union. Guests were able to sample Meatable’s cultivated pork sausages, which had received safety approval from a committee sanctioned by the Dutch government, at the company’s headquarters in Leiden.
Just a month earlier, Meatable announced it had slashed the production time for its cultivated sausages to just four days, claiming to have developed the quickest cell-cultivating method in the world. The process is reportedly 60 times faster than traditional pig farming.
In May, Meatable appointed Jeff Tripician, a meat industry veteran, as its new CEO. Tripician will lead the company’s expansion into the US market.
“We are proud to announce Meatable has been awarded a EUR 7.6 million Innovation Credit by the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO)!” said the company on LinkedIn. “We’d like to thank the Netherlands Enterprise Agency for their trust in us and great collaboration on our journey so far — their experience, knowledge and tools have helped us mature as an organisation. We look forward to the next chapters!”
