Hoxton Farms, a London-based startup that produces animal fat without using animals, has raised $22 million in a Series A round that was co-led by Collaborative Fund and Fine Structure Ventures.
Systemiq Capital, AgFunder, MCJ Collective, and prior investors Founders Fund, BACKED VC, Presight Capital, CPT Capital, and Sustainable Food Ventures are some of the additional investors who are taking part.
In 2020, Dr. Max Jamilly and Ed Steele founded Hoxton Farms, a company that grows actual animal fat without using any animals. Global rivals of the startup include Current Foods, Planted, Juicy Marbles, and others.
Max Jamilly, Co-founder of Hoxton Farms says, “We are fat-obsessed at Hoxton. The single most significant sensory element in all the meat we consume is fat. We have demonstrated that it is possible to create products with the juiciness and flavor that plant-based meat has been lacking by combining produced fat with plant proteins.”
He added, “We are now constructing our pilot plant in the heart of London so that we can demonstrate to guests a different approach to producing the same wonderful meat.”
To improve meat delivery, the UK startup raises actual animal fat in bioreactors. Customers of the company combine the greatest aspects of both cell-cultured, plant-based products—fat and plant-based protein.
They consequently produce blended meat substitutes that offer consumers the taste, texture, and nutrients they anticipate—and at a more reasonable cost.
“Growth in the market for plant-based meat has slowed to a crawl,” Jamilly continues. Despite having more options than ever before, consumers still yearn for classic meat’s mouthwatering flavor and juicy texture. In the USA, plant-based meat’s dollar sales and market share stagnated in 20211, and about 60% of US consumers are hesitant to try it because of how it tastes.”
Jamilly remarked, “Animal agriculture uses up 77% of all agricultural land, even though it only provides 17% of our food, and has a higher global impact on climate change than transportation emissions. But before we can make a dent in the intensive animal agriculture sector and close the last factory farm on Earth, meat alternatives need to be significantly improved. Herein lies the value of Hoxton Farms.
The business creates custom bioreactors and inexpensive, animal-free culture media—the nutrient-rich broth needed to feed cells—using machine learning and mathematical modeling.
“Cost and scale are two of the major difficulties in the cellular agriculture industry, but they aren’t talked about enough,” says Ed Steele, co-founder of Hoxton Farms. Since the beginning of Hoxton Farms, we have been completely committed to finding solutions to these issues and, as a result of our computational strategy, we have made substantial progress.”
Steele continued, “Additionally, we have developed a fantastic workforce, cutting-edge technology, and significant client relationships. The ideal partners as we construct our pilot plant and show our scale-out production method are Collaborative Fund and Fidelity.
“At Collaborative Fund, we’ve been investing in better ways to create meat for over a decade, including in startups like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat,” continues Sophie Bakalar, Partner at Collaborative Fund. These companies have done a fantastic job providing the necessary protein, but we still require a breakthrough in the area of fat if we are to compete with conventional meat in terms of flavor, texture, affordability, and health. Hoxton Farms, in our opinion, is the business that will fulfill that promise.
Fine Structure Ventures partner Jennifer Uhrig says, “We are quite impressed with the technology that Hoxton Farms has created. Utilizing machine learning, biology, and engineering together has revealed untapped knowledge that significantly boosts output at every stage of the production process. The cost of generating cultured fat is decreased thanks to the innovative scale-out approach, which also eliminates the danger of scaling beyond the pilot. Over the coming years, we are eager to collaborate closely with the Hoxton Farms team.
Image Credit: Hoxton Farms
