Cultivated meat may be facing a tough market, but it’s far from being written off, insists Jeff “Trip” Tripician, the new US-based CEO of Dutch startup Meatable. Tripician, a seasoned veteran of the meat industry, took the helm last month and is confident about the future of cultivated meat. “Our supply chain as it stands is not able to feed 8 billion people without destroying the environment,” he asserts.
Large food and meat companies, which Tripician predicts will eventually fund the scale-up of this technology, are acutely aware of this reality. “They know that in the next couple of years, they can invest in organic and grass-fed and regenerative and free-range, and they can charge more for these products and make a return,” he explains. “But they also know that these solutions are only so scalable; they take more land, and the animals grow more slowly and are more expensive to feed. They’re not as efficient. At some point, they are going to have to ask: what’s next?”
Tripician highlights the advantages of cultivated meat and seafood, which can be produced without the issues of land use, water consumption, disease, and animal welfare concerns. “It can address the issues that consumers care about and have already shown they will pay extra for, so if we can do it efficiently, why wouldn’t people buy it?” he asks.
Meatable’s approach diverges sharply from other cultivated meat startups that have been overly ambitious, banking on venture capital to fund large-scale commercial facilities before their technology was fully developed. “They made a decision that I think was fatal,” says Tripician. “They said, ‘I’ll take a limited investment, I’ll invest it in brick and mortar, and I’ll hope that I can create a product with my name on it and do that in time to not run out of money and fill a plant.’”
Instead, Meatable sees itself as a raw material supplier, a vendor to established meat companies. “The companies that will win will have the best science, and they will partner with established [meat] companies that will build the large-scale plants,” he notes. Supported by new board member Dean Banks, former president and CEO of Tyson Foods, Tripician believes that meat companies will integrate cultivated meat into their capital expenditure plans for decades, potentially through incremental standalone cultivated meat plants.
Meatable utilizes patented ‘opti-ox’ technology, developed by cofounder Dr. Mark Kotter, enabling precise control and rapid acceleration of the cell differentiation process. A key milestone for the company is February 2025, when it plans to host an open house at its pilot plant in Leiden, showcasing its technology and products.
While Meatable aims to test market products in Singapore later this year, pending regulatory approvals, it does not intend to engage in extensive commercial sales with loss-making technology. “The point of each test is to learn something,” says Tripician. “At some point, the day will arrive when our partners will say, ‘Look at the costs of goods, look at the efficiency, we think it’s close enough to where we want to be that we should break ground [on a commercial facility].’”
Meatable has already seen significant reductions in the cost of goods, and Tripician is optimistic about reaching a price point comparable to organic and other premium meat products. The company has made strides in slashing production times for cultivated pork, improving its unit economics amid industry scrutiny.
Cofounder and CTO Daan Luining acknowledges the challenging times for the cultivated meat industry, with investment plunging last year. However, he notes that Meatable secured the largest round ($35 million Series B) in the sector in 2023, bringing its total funding to just under $100 million. “A lot of companies just got in with the idea that they could take off-the-shelf stuff without true innovation and then build the train tracks while the train was running,” says Luining. “But we started with a unique technology and that has allowed us to make progress without succumbing to hype and trying not to oversell anything.”
Meatable’s Opti-Ox technology represents a breakthrough in stem cell biology, enabling the company to precisely control and dramatically speed up the differentiation process. Meatable operates a continuous perfusion process, siphoning off cells daily as they double every 16 to 24 hours, making its cultivated meat production process economically viable.
As the cultivated meat industry navigates through its natural cycle of hype, stagnation, consolidation, and redirection, Meatable remains focused on leveraging its unique technology to drive innovation and progress.