Ivy Farm Technologies

Ivy Farm Technologies is a spin-off of Oxford University, that develops cultivated meats using cells extracted from animals in a growth medium inside a bioreactor. According to the company, its key differentiator from its peers is a unique scaffold system that is owned by Oxford University and licensed to Ivy Farms Technologies. The startup’s approach to scaffolding involves creating a special surface that allows for the continuous harvest of cells at a lower cost compared to other technologies. It plans to develop cultivated British pork sausages first and venture on to other meat products like Angus beef burgers and Wagyu meatballs.

The cell-cultured meat startup has pledged to produce 12,000 tons of cell-cultured pork annually by 2025, which would be equivalent to replacing 170,000 livestock. Taking a step towards this goal, in August 2022 , the company unveiled a cultivated meat production facility in Oxford which they claim is the largest of its kind in Europe. The facility was fitted with a 600-liter bioreactor and has an annual production capacity of 2.8 tonnes of cultured meat.

As of May 2021, Ivy Farm Technologies was in talks with the Food Standards Agency for the approval of its cell-cultured pork before its UK launch. The company also intends to gain approval in various parts of the world, to commercialize its cultured pork globally.

Key customers and partnerships

In July 2023 , the company partnered with Finnebrogue, a UK food producer, to develop and sell cultivated Wagyu beef burgers in the UK following regulatory approval for cultivated meat. The cells for the cultivation process were to be derived from Finnerbrogue’s herd.

In February 2024 , Ivy Farm partnered with luxury department store Fortnum & Mason to produce a Scotch egg using cell-cultured meat. Further, it partnered with BSF Enterprise in March 2024 , to procure support for fundraising, production, and broadening of cell-based meat in China. In May 2024 , Ivy Farm partnered with Finnish synthetic biology firm Synbio Powerlabs to scale the production of cultivated meat to industrial levels.

Funding and financials

In December 2021, Ivy Farms raised USD 20 million in a seed funding round. The planned use of this funding was to construct a cultivated meat production plant that enabled the company to scale up its production.