Medeon Blogg

Re:meat advances at Medeon Lab with its cultivated meat process

Exciting developments are underway at Medeon's well-equipped laboratories. The innovative company Re:meat is optimizing and scaling up its process for producing cultivated minced beef. Cultivated meat is produced similar to beer in a brewery environment and has up to 92% lower climate footprint than conventional meat. The meat is produced from animal cells and is harvested as a minced meat. Same meat but without the need to slaughter any animals. Re:meat recently entered into a partnership with ICA Sverige and the company is currently raising 1.4 million euros in capital funding.

At Medeon Lab, businesses can rent space to develop their processes. Among these companies is Re:meat, pioneering a more efficient and cost-effective method for cultivating meat than others in the same field. Over the past six months, Re:meat's development has progressed significantly.

Scale up production and cut down costs

"We have started small-scale production, yielding enough product to make one meatball per week. Our progress is truly exciting! We love it here at Medeon Lab where we have equipment, including a bioreactor, suitable to prepare for scaling. Our aim is to scale up to an industrial size bioreactor this summer,” says Marie Gibbons, CSO and co-founder of Re:meat.

The cultivated minced meat tastes like conventional minced meat because it is meat, with the only difference being that it is cultivated. Cells are cultured in nutrient-rich broth until a large number of cells are obtained in the form of minced meat.

Over the past six months, the company also has succeeded in decreasing production costs to one-tenth of the normal expenditure.

"At Medeon Labs, we are able to make cell culture media from scratch, which not only saves costs but also gives us greater control over the media composition. Moreover, we have made some process developments and patent applications that further reduce costs," explains Marie Gibbons.

Partnership with ICA

Re:meat has recently entered into a partnership with ICA.

“Together, ICA and Re:meat will gain consumer insights to establish the criteria needed to generate consumer demand aimed at making a sustainable impact. Following this, pilot production will be carried out,” says Marie Gibbons, and continues:

“We have also welcomed two new team members: Marten Schmidt, the previous Head of New Technologies at Carlsberg's brewery, bringing expertise in bioreactor design, engineering and scale-up, and Emma Itting our R&D scientist, who has an M.Sc. in Biotechnology with a focus on cell cultivation, differentiation and tissue engineering, as well as sustainable industrial processes."

Re:meat envisions constructing a Re:meatery capable of producing 10,000 tons of minced meat annually within five years. They aim to supply a minced meat commodity to producers for the manufacture of consumer goods such as meatballs and hamburgers. They are also planning to apply for regulatory approval to sell cultivated meat in Europe later this summer. Currently, only a few states in the USA, along with Singapore and Israel, permit the sale of cultivated meat to consumers.