European VCs back cultivated meat facility with £10.4m funding

Three European venture capital (VC) funds have invested £10.4m in cultivated meat producer Meatly to back the development of a new facility that will help tackle the climate crisis through more sustainable meat production.

Food and agtech VC firm Oyster Bay Venture Capital, which is backed by institutional investors, joined specialist climate tech VC platform Clean Growth Fund and consumer VC fund JamJar Investments in investing a combined £10.4m, which Meatly said would be used to build Europe’s largest cultivated meat facility in London. Product releases are expected to follow in 2027.

This latest raise builds on the £7 million in seed funding provided by founding investor, Agronomics, and Pets at Home, bringing total funding raised to date to £17.4m.

Since launching in 2022, Meatly has been working to solve key technical cost challenges facing the cultivated meat industry to accelerate the path to scalable, affordable production and tackle the climate crisis.

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Connor Duffy, investment manager at Clean Growth Fund, said rethinking how people produce protein is an “essential part of tackling the climate crisis”.

“We’ve invested in Meatly because they are showing it’s possible to produce real meat cost-competitively and with a fraction of the environmental impact. The team is focused on building a commercially viable path to scale, which will ultimately determine whether solutions like this can deliver meaningful change,” he said.

Elise Schumacher, investor at Oyster Bay Venture Capital ,added: “Cultivated meat is emerging as one of the most sustainable and ethical ways to produce meat today. Having built and grown some of the most successful food businesses ourselves, we know what it takes – and this is exactly the kind of company we like to back.”

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