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Achieving the same marbling and texture as cuts of animal meat has been a challenge for food technology startups looking to produce fully farmed meats, but Novel Farms believes it has cracked the code with pork loin.
With $1.4 million in SAFE notes, or simple agreement for future equity, the company, founded in 2020 by Nieves Martínez Marshall and Michelle Lou, is making farmed meat — grown from cells instead of animals. They met as postdoctoral scientists in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley.
Martínez Marshall for Techarunded’s has successfully developed the world’s first pig that shows the admiration and texture of real muscle cuts. “
“There is no other company making pork today,” she said when asked how the company could make such a “world first” claim. His closest competitors are Top Steak in London and CellX in China, both of which are doing pork belly, he said.
Other processed meat companies focus on making food, in most cases from earth sources. For example, sausages (Meatable), burgers (SCiFi Foods) and chicken (UPSIDE Foods) are easier to make than whole cuts, Martinez Marshall added. Bluu Seafood, a German company that develops lab-grown seafood, released fish sticks and fish balls this week. The products are made from processed fish cells and plant protein.
Novel Farms co-founders Michelle Lu and Nieves Martinez Marshall. Image Credits: Novel farms
Although Martinez-Marshall doesn’t want to get into the weeds about Novel Pharms’ technology, she said it is developing a proprietary microbial fermentation method to produce the scaffolding needed to create all the cuttings, but at a lower cost. It does this by using inexpensive microorganisms commonly used in food.
However, unlike its peers in the processed meat industry, Novel Farm Technology bypasses that step entirely to allow biomaterials such as alginate, cellulose, and mycelia to attach cells, reducing scaffolding production costs by 99.27 percent. Martínez Marshall says this means that product scaling will be faster, and price comparisons with traditional meat products will be successful.
The company has already demonstrated that the technology is viable and can produce processed meat. Still, she doesn’t expect pork to be in the hands of consumers until 2025, with commercial plants coming online in 2026, followed by mass production in 2027.
Secured investment comes from a group of investors, Big Idea Ventures with a majority stake, and Joyance/Social Startups Finance, Sustainable Food Ventures, Good Start, CULT Foods and strategic angel investors. The seed of Novel Farms is also starting.
The capital plan includes hiring a team (currently just Martinez, Marshall and Lue) and scaling.
“We have a very good and efficient scaffold and the cells attach very well,” said Martinez-Marshall. “That’s something no one else has. Once we verify and qualify with Bioreactor, we are the most affordable of all the companies.
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