Mirai Foods’ CEO says cell-based burger scalability is “unlimited” following US$4.5M seed financing

25 Mar 2021 --- Swiss cultivated meat start-up Mirai Foods has revealed that it is launching its cultivated beef burger patties at the end of next year. The company is eyeing a commercial-sized rollout from 2024 onwards. 

The announcement comes following an additional US$2.2 million in its second closing of seed financing, bringing the total funding to US$4.5 million.

Speaking with FoodIngredientsFirst, Christoph Mayr, co-founder and CEO, says the company’s process is “parallelizable and therefore, the scalability is, in theory, unlimited.”

“We will launch our flagship product at the end of 2022 and start producing in significant quantities, from 2024,” he explains. 

Eyeing a successful rollout
Mirai Foods’ long-term goal is to produce natural meat without the need for slaughtering animals. Importantly, no genetic modification is used in the company’s proprietary process. 

It is creating products with EU consumer preferences in mind, focusing on producing a healthy offering. 

While the company aims to produce various product lines to maximize the impact of cellular agriculture on animal welfare and environmental goals, its first product will be beef, as it has the most significant greenhouse gas footprint.

The latest seed funding will be used to build a pilot production plant and improve in-house lab capabilities.Sustainability over profit
Mirai Foods was established in 2019, and currently, the company employs just ten people.

Commenting on the company’s ethos, Mayr says its strategy is to focus on sustainability instead of profit motives.

“We want to provide delicious, healthy cultivated meat that is so good that people eat it instead of traditional meat. By doing so, we can address three main goals,” he continues. 

“The first is reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and the second is to vastly improve animal welfare and save millions of animal lives every year. Lastly, we want to provide consumers with a healthier alternative to traditional meat. This is why we started developing cultivated meat.”

Mirai Foods has developed its flagship cultivated beef burger patties. “We can already create all kinds of different minced beef products,” Mayr states. 

In the future, the company hopes to offer many different species, including chicken, duck, fish and seafood. 

“We are playing with different kinds of structures, such as strips and even full steaks,” he adds. 

“For now, it’s just beef, but seafood and fish are planned to be on the menu later.” 

Overcoming regulatory hurdles 
For Mirai Foods, gaining regulatory approval has been challenging. 

“The bar we have to clear is very high,” Mayr continues. “Some regulators are quite slow to offer approval. Europe will likely be one of the last ones to give their stamp of approval, given how slow the processes can be.”

Meanwhile, the company is researching scaffolding material options, which Mayr says can influence the texture “a lot that way.”

It’s an interesting area of innovation, and we can mimic the meat texture quite well already,” he says.

In the cultivated meat space, scaffolding is a term used which describes the molding of the object the cells turn into. 

Scaffolding is put inside the bioreactor for the cells to grow. In recent years, different materials have been studied for the purposes of creating scaffolds, each having its own potential applications and challenges. 

Previously, Matrix Meats’ director of F&D detailed how the company’s scaffold mimics the extracellular matrix found in living animals. 

Raising investmentsMirai Foods’ long-term goal is to produce natural meat without the need for slaughtering animals.
Earlier this month, Mirai Foods raised US$2.2 million in the second closing of seed financing, bringing the total funding of the seed round to US$4.5 million.

“With the additional investment, we’re in an excellent position to strengthen the team and speed up our research,” Mayr details.

“This investment is critical to provide high-quality cultivated meat at a fair price. Our partners not only share our mission but also have great strategic and operational capabilities.”

He also says the funding can be used to build a pilot production plant and improve in-house lab capabilities. Mirai Foods will move into its new lab and office space this summer.

The new and existing backers of the company include German Family Office FRIBA Investment, Swiss Advanced Nutrition & Biotech VC Skyviews Life Science, Zürich based serial entrepreneur and tech investor Ulf Claesson, food company Paulig through its venture arm PINC, and technology investor Team Europe.

“Cultivated meat will be a key contributor to a sustainable global food system. At the interface between food science and tissue engineering, Mirai is one of the leading next-generation companies, and we are delighted to be part of their journey,” says Stefan Catsicas, managing partner at Skyviews Life Science.

According to Mayr, the Swiss start-up will be looking to raise further investments in Q1 next year. 

By Elizabeth Green