Chinese cultivated meat producer CellX expands to fermentation, eyeing boom in global demand for alternative proteins
- CellX sees huge market for cultivated meat but a fermentation platform makes for faster commercialisation, allowing a quicker route to profits: CEO
- The company is developing protein products based on premium mushroom mycelium, which are also under-utilised and fast-growing superfood ingredients
CellX, a Shanghai-based cultivated meat start-up, is betting biomass fermentation from edible mushrooms will be the next frontier in the alternative protein market, as animal cell-based protein products face uncertain regulatory resistance overseas and amid a longer timeline for large-scale commercialisation.
Cultivated meat is produced by developing a sample of animal cells directly in a lab, without involving animal slaughter. Fermentation-based proteins on the other hand are made from microbial organisms such as yeast, algae, or fungi. The company, which started as a cultivated meat producer, announced its biomass fermentation plans late last year after two years of preparation.
“We see cultivated meat as having a huge potential over the next 10 to 30 years,” CellX’s co-founder and CEO Yang Ziliang told the Post on the sidelines of the One Earth Summit in Hong Kong last week. But he added, “a fermentation platform enables us to go to the market faster and achieve profitability goals much quicker.”
Global demand for alternative proteins is growing rapidly and the pace has accelerated given the urgent need to decarbonise the agriculture and food sectors. In order for Asia to reach net zero emissions, 50 per cent of the region’s protein must be animal-free by 2060, a report by Asia Research Engagement showed.
The market for alternative meat, eggs, dairy, and seafood products is set to reach at least US$290 billion by 2035, according to a report by Boston Consulting Group and Blue Horizon Corporation.
Last November, CellX announced plans to diversify into fermenting mycelium, which is a network of fungal threads, three months after it launched China’s first cultivated meat pilot factory. It plans to sell fermentation-enabled protein products starting next year in the US market, while awaiting approval for selling cultivated meat in the US and Singapore. Yang expects its cultivated meat product will be available for sale in those markets in two years.
