Meat without the death of animals. Brno startup Mewery is raising tens of millions from investors
Science around the world is busy trying to fully replace meat. Although countless successful vegetable substitutes have been created in recent years, the flavors and structures do not match the animal original. The Czech startup Mewery, whose initial successes with a unique laboratory method attracted notable investors, will also try to change that.
Leading domestic venture capital funds Credo Ventures and Purple Ventures recently invested in the Brno company, which was founded two years ago by IT entrepreneur Roman Lauš. None of the parties wanted to comment on the exact amount, but according to Forbes, it should be in the lower tens of millions of crowns. The startup intends to use them to retrofit a new laboratory, expand the research team, speed up the introduction of the prototype, and protect intellectual property.
“For us at Credo, Mewery is the first investment in a foodtech startup, and we chose it because Roman and his team convinced us that their approach was extremely innovative and could contribute to a significant shift in the path of cultured meat in the market,” he comments investment Ondřej Bartoš, partner of the Credo Ventures fund, which holds a stake in the unicorn Productboard or other promising startups such as Manta, Deepnote or Resistant.ai.
From the very beginning, the goal of Lauš’s team of meat lovers has been alternatives that will not only be healthy and environmentally friendly, but at the same time will taste and have a texture similar to what they are used to. At the same time, he focused on full-fledged pork, developed in the laboratory using the process of “cultivation from mammalian cells using a growth medium based on microalgae”.
If the reader finds the last sentence somewhat incomprehensible, let him be shown the final product, which should resemble minced meat – only the aforementioned microalgae will be added to the muscle and fat. “This will create a one-of-a-kind product. Microalgae gives the meat the designation of so-called fortification, when the food is enriched with other beneficial components, such as vitamins, antioxidants, minerals, fiber or essential fatty acids,” Lauš.
In the past, he was one of the main organizers of the Future Port festival, where at the same time the idea of founding a company with a significant social impact arose. The method applied by Mewery differs from others in that the growth-promoting substance points to the so-called Fetal Bovine Serum.
Simply put, it is a supportive serum obtained from animals, which is usually used for these purposes. “That was the main intention we set at the beginning, i.e. a cultivation medium without animal products, meat without the death of animals,” says Lauš.
Currently, the startup’s unique solution has been verified in various environments, thanks to which Mewery received a so-called “proof of concept” – proof that his idea can really be implemented. Mewery is thus a little closer to the desired meat produced in the laboratory, and Lauš believes that the first samples and subsequently the prototypes should be ready by the end of this year.
“Even though it’s a long shot, we are convinced that alternative proteins, produced on the basis of animal cells, will represent a fundamental shift towards a more sustainable, humane and, I believe, healthier future of food,” comments Jan Staněk, founding partner of the Purple fund. Ventures.
The legitimacy of Mewery’s ambitions is evidenced by the fact that the American accelerator Big Idea Ventures, the globally most active investment fund in the field of foodtech, has already looked at the startup. For the first time ever, this prestigious accelerator included a Czech project in its portfolio. At that time, the Brno startup succeeded in three sets of global companies – the accelerator supports fifteen of them and only five from Europe.