Meati unveils US$250M mycelium “Mega Ranch” to scale up plant-based production facilities

30 Jan 2023 --- After raising US$150 million in a Series C funding round, US-based Meati Foods is opening a new industrial-scale facility in Colorado to expand the production of its mycelium-based protein cultivation. The “Mega Ranch” is expected to produce millions of pounds of the product by late 2023. 

Meati says its proprietary process is “nearly infinitely scalable” and “able to grow a teaspoon of spores into hundreds of cows’ equivalent of whole-food protein in just a few days.” 

The Mega Ranch will grow, harvest, process and package Meati products under one roof, specifically its Eat Meati product line, which includes the classic cutlet, crispy cutlet, classic steak and carne asada steak.

Mycelium protein fungal-based meat alternatives are proving increasingly popular in the alternative meat space.

“Consumers are demanding something different and better,” says Tyler Huggins, CEO and co-founder of Meati Foods. 

As Veganuary comes to a close, consumers are becoming more aware of the variety of dietary options available to them, with many flexitarians and vegan-curious consumers using this month to explore changes in how they eat.

“The next few years will see a seismic shift in how we eat,” says Fazeela Abdul Rashid, partner at Revolution Growth and member of the Meati Foods board.

Talking to FoodIngredientsFirst in 2021, Huggins explained the simplicity of the Meati product. https://www.foodingredientsfirst.com/news/us-based-start-up-meati-strives-for-fungi-domination-in-plant-based-arena.html

“Meati delivers a nutritionally dense whole-food protein but uses a small fraction of the ingredients used in most plant-based meats – the end product is essentially just mycelium with seasoning,” says Huggins.

This investment round is led by Revolution Growth, with the most recent contribution by Rockefeller Capita.

Meati Foods is opening a new US$250 million “Mega Ranch” to produce its mycelium-based product.Industrial growth 
The alternative protein space has seen a boom in the construction of new factories over the last few years. 

Israel-based Believer Meats (formerly Future Meat Technologies), recently broke ground on facility in the US to produce cultivated chicken meat, the largest factory of its kind in the world.

Multus Biotechnology, which produces ingredients for cellular agriculture, plans on using its US$9.5 million Series A funding to build a UK-based production plant to produce growth media at a commercial scale. 

Last year, fungal-protein producers united to form The Fungal Protein Association to support the growth of and advocate for fungal solutions. Major players include Quorn, ProVeg and Better Meat Co.

Roquette recently expanded its plant-based, pea-heavy protein portfolio with investment into Japanese seed germination start-up Daiz, further establishing Roquette’s dominance of the pea protein space. 

In 2021, Roquette unveiled the world’s largest pea-protein factory in Canada’s “Silicon Valley of plant protein.” Roquette also has a production facility in Vic-sur-Aisne (France), the largest pea protein plant in Europe.

Also in 2021, Enough (formerly 3F BIO) broke ground on what it says will become the world’s largest fermented protein facility, capable of producing 50,000 metric tons a year of its mycoprotein ingredient Abunda. This move followed a US$51M Series B funding round. 

By James Davies