NESS ZIONA, ISRAEL – MeaTech Europe announced plans to establish and operate a pilot plant that will begin scaled-up cultured chicken fat production in 2022. MeaTech Europe is a subsidiary of MeaTech 3D Ltd., which develops industrial-scale cultivated meat production technologies.

The facility will be designed to deploy technologies developed by Peace of Meat, which was acquired by MeaTech earlier in 2021. Peace of Meat developed a proprietary, stem-cell-based technology to produce animal fats, such as those from cattle, chicken or geese without slaughtering any animals. MeaTech’s goal is to produce cultured chicken fat for use in potential industry collaborations.

“We believe that our cultured fat is an extremely promising additive ingredient that can potentially improve the taste, texture, and mouthfeel of plant-based alternative meats, which we believe can further drive market growth,” said Sharon Fima, chief executive officer of MeaTech. “A key challenge facing the cultured meat industry is cost-efficient production. We believe that establishing this pilot plant facility and scaling up our cellular agriculture technologies will be a significant step forward toward achieving cost parity with conventional meat as well as realizing MeaTech’s vision for the ‘Factory of the Future’ – comprising the inputs, processes and equipment underlying a flexible cultured meat manufacturing facility.”

MeaTech said manufacturing cultured chicken fat at scale would represent a key milestone for the company. By leveraging its cultured chicken fat technologies, MeaTech aims to develop an industrial process for cultivating and producing real meat cuts, such as steak or chicken breast, using 3D bioprinting technology.

Dirk von Heinrichshorst, CEO and co-founder of Peace of Meat, said that with a pilot plant “… we believe we can demonstrate a fully functional production process to B2B customers looking to include cultured ingredients in their products. We believe the pilot plant can be a model for larger scale future production facilities.”