The Year of Living Larger, that’s 2022 and cultivated meat. Last year we saw several pilot plants come on line including from BlueNalu and UPSIDE Foods and now we’re seeing scale up by GoodMeat from Eat Just, Inc. As this video shows we’re now seeing significantly larger bioreactors in the ten’s of thousands of litres.
As I’ve said before, 2022/23 are going to be the most interesting years so far for alternative proteins. We’ll see non-plantbased alternative proteins like mycoprotein scale up to commercial volumes. Expect to see major improvements in flavour and texture of plantbased products as global ingredients and flavour companies plough resources into the sector. Plantbased sources like chickpea concentrates and isolates from companies like ChickP are hitting the market offering alternatives to pea and soy, helping stabilise raw material supply.
We’ll find out whether the promise of FBS and antibiotic free cultivated meat can be fulfilled at scale. Doing so will cement these promises as true advantages of cultivated meat. It will also help answer the skeptics as to whether cultivated meat can ever be commercially viable and cost competitive. But don’t forget that we’ll undoubtedly see new technologies enter the space that haven’t been evaluated yet for their contribution to the viability of cultivated meat.
That’s the great thing about the food industry at the moment, when you wake up in the morning you never know what new technology has just raised its head!
