Meatly moves into a 20,000-litre London plant to settle cultivated meat's unit economics
The fit-out costs £3-4 million and the UK company gives itself about two years to show cultivated chicken can be produced for under £10 per kilogram.
Meatly, the London cultivated meat company, is moving into a production site built around 20,000-litre vessels, and says the purpose of the move is to settle whether the process can run at a cost the pet food market will actually pay. Chief executive Owen Ensor told AgFunderNews on 28 September 2026 that the team expects to be in the building within weeks. Chief science officer Helder Cruz leads the process work.
The fit-out costs £3 million to £4 million, a small figure for a facility at that scale, and the company is targeting a production cost below £10 per kilogram. Ensor's argument is that a process running at £50 or £100 per kilogram is a restaurant product rather than a pet food ingredient, and that Meatly has not yet proved it can reach price parity. He puts roughly two years on answering that question. The company describes 20,000 litres as the largest scale it ever needs to reach.
The move follows a £10.4 million Series A announced earlier in 2026, with new investors Oyster Bay Venture Capital, Clean Growth Fund and JamJar Investments joining existing backers Agronomics and Pets at Home. That takes total funding to £17.4 million, including an earlier £7 million seed round.
Meatly secured UK regulatory authorisation for cultivated chicken in pet food in 2024 and ran a retail trial in 2025, making it the first company in Europe to sell cultivated meat commercially. Product from the new site is expected to reach the market in 2027.
Why it matters for AgTech founders: the number worth studying here is not 20,000 litres, it is £3-4 million. Meatly is buying the last scale-up step it needs rather than the largest one available, and it has set a cost ceiling defined by what the customer already pays rather than by what the technology might eventually deliver. Pet food is doing real work in that calculation, with a lower price expectation than human food, a shorter regulatory path and a retail partner already on the cap table. Founders in fermentation, cultivated protein and biomanufacturing are usually asked at Series A how big their plant will be. The more useful answer is how small it can be and still clear the price the buyer will pay, and what it costs to find that out. Meatly has priced that experiment at two years and a few million pounds, which is cheap by the standards of this field.
Meatly, the London cultivated meat company, is moving into a production site built around 20,000-litre vessels, and says the purpose of the move is to settle whether the process can run at a cost the pet food market will actually pay. Chief executive Owen Ensor told AgFunderNews on 28 September 2026 that the team expects to be in the building within weeks. Chief science officer Helder Cruz leads the process work.
The fit-out costs £3 million to £4 million, a small figure for a facility at that scale, and the company is targeting a production cost below £10 per kilogram. Ensor's argument is that a process running at £50 or £100 per kilogram is a restaurant product rather than a pet food ingredient, and that Meatly has not yet proved it can reach price parity. He puts roughly two years on answering that question. The company describes 20,000 litres as the largest scale it ever needs to reach.
The move follows a £10.4 million Series A announced earlier in 2026, with new investors Oyster Bay Venture Capital, Clean Growth Fund and JamJar Investments joining existing backers Agronomics and Pets at Home. That takes total funding to £17.4 million, including an earlier £7 million seed round.
Meatly secured UK regulatory authorisation for cultivated chicken in pet food in 2024 and ran a retail trial in 2025, making it the first company in Europe to sell cultivated meat commercially. Product from the new site is expected to reach the market in 2027.
Why it matters for AgTech founders: the number worth studying here is not 20,000 litres, it is £3-4 million. Meatly is buying the last scale-up step it needs rather than the largest one available, and it has set a cost ceiling defined by what the customer already pays rather than by what the technology might eventually deliver. Pet food is doing real work in that calculation, with a lower price expectation than human food, a shorter regulatory path and a retail partner already on the cap table. Founders in fermentation, cultivated protein and biomanufacturing are usually asked at Series A how big their plant will be. The more useful answer is how small it can be and still clear the price the buyer will pay, and what it costs to find that out. Meatly has priced that experiment at two years and a few million pounds, which is cheap by the standards of this field.
