Eat Just’s cultivated meat division breaks ground for S$61m facility in Singapore
Francine Ho
GOOD Meat, the cultivated meat division of food technology company Eat Just, broke ground on Friday (Jun 10) for a new S$61 million meat production facility in Singapore, which will have the capacity to produce “tens of thousands of pounds” of lab-grown meat per year.
Located at JTC Bedok Food City, the research and development (R&D) and production centre is slated to open in Q1 2023 and is expected to be the largest cultivated meat facility in Asia. About 50 researchers, scientists and engineers will work in the site, which spans 30,000 square feet.
“We view Singapore as vital in our plans to build this new approach to making meat. We’ll launch new products here, distribute to other countries in Asia from here and learn from consumers here who have proven themselves to be at the cutting edge of what’s next,” said Josh Tetrick, Eat Just’s chief executive officer and co-founder.
The facility is significant not just for the company but for the whole of Singapore’s food industry, as an important step in making more meat using Good Meat’s sustainable approach, Tetrick told The Business Times.
Good Meat produces alternative protein from animal cells instead of slaughtered animals, growing these proteins inside bioreactors. The facility in Singapore will house a 6000-litre bioreactor, which the company says is the largest in the industry to date.
The sale of cultivated chicken was first approved by the Singapore Food Agency in late 2020. Since then, Good Meat’s cultivated chicken has been sold to restaurants and hawker stalls, as well as directly to consumers.
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“But selling is not enough,” Tetrick told BT. “We have to scale, we have to build a larger capacity in order to satisfy the tens of millions and then billions of people.”
While the company currently only sells lab-grown chicken products, it eventually wants to produce other types of protein, such as beef and pork, to meet the local consumer demand, said Tetrick.
Minister of Sustainability and the Environment Grace Fu, who was guest-of-honour at the event, said: “Good Meat is leading the way in producing protein with alternative methods to supplement our local production.”
She added that alternative proteins require less land and labour compared to conventional livestock farming, and are more climate-resilient and disease-resilient.
“With technological advancements and growing consumer demand for sustainable food, alternative proteins have the potential to supplement Singapore’s agricultural productivity and contribute meaningfully to our ‘30 by 30’ goal,” Fu said, referring to Singapore’s aim of producing 30 per cent of its food locally and sustainably by 2030.
Good Meat’s innovation comes amid the growing importance of food security as the world faces global shortages due to the Russia-Ukraine crisis and climate change, while Singapore’s chicken supply is also suffering from Malaysia’s recent export ban, Fu added.
“Today’s event marks yet another important milestone. Good Meat’s R&D and production facility, to be built here, will leverage our strengths in advanced manufacturing and bio-technology processes and further cement our position in the alternative protein space and our reputation as a food innovation hub,” she said.
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