Meatly Secures £10.4 M to Build Europe’s Largest Cultivated Meat Bioreactor for Pets

Context London’s cultivated‑meat pioneer Meatly announced the funding round in early May. The capital came from three new institutional investors—Oyster Bay Venture Capital, Clean Growth Fund and JamJar Investments—joining early backers Agronomics and Pets at Home. The total financing now stands at £17.4 million.

Key Facts - The Series A injection of £10.4 million will finance a 20,000‑litre steel bioreactor plant, the largest of its kind in Europe. - Founder Owen Ensor says the company has spent four years cutting costs and strengthening its technology, positioning it to scale production. - By 2024 Meatly reduced the price of its protein‑free culture medium—a nutrient solution that feeds cells—to £0.22 per litre, a critical step toward commercial viability. - In 2025 the firm cut bioreactor expenses roughly tenfold by manufacturing the equipment in‑house, further narrowing the gap between lab and market. - Meatly already sells cultivated chicken to UK pet‑food retailers and received UK regulatory approval for the world’s first cultivated‑meat pet product in 2025.

What It Means Meatly’s funding marks a rare move from research to large‑scale manufacturing in the cultivated‑meat sector, where most firms remain in the laboratory phase. By targeting pet food, the startup sidesteps the higher regulatory hurdles that affect human‑grade products in the United States and leverages a market more open to novel protein sources. The cost reductions in culture medium and bioreactor production suggest a pathway to price parity with conventional meat, a key barrier for broader adoption.

The new facility will enable continuous production of cultivated chicken, allowing Meatly to meet growing demand from pet‑food chains and potentially expand into other animal‑protein categories. Investors see the project as a foundation for a new protein category that could reshape supply chains across Europe.

What to watch next Monitor the plant’s commissioning schedule and the first commercial pet‑food launches slated for 2027, as they will signal whether cultivated meat can achieve scale and cost competitiveness in a real‑world market.