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SINGAPORE: San Francisco-based Eat Just said Singapore will be its Asia headquarters and potentially its global manufacturing hub, CEO and co-founder of the meat and egg substitute maker Josh said on Monday (Dec 21). Tetrick.
“Singapore for us will be, at the very least, the base of Asia,” Tetrick said during a video interview at a media event for its farmed chicken product. “And we are looking at Singapore as the global manufacturing hub for what we call our brand’s Good Meat, (with) one or two facilities in Western Europe and one or two in North America.”
“I am hopeful that the United States and Western Europe will follow Singapore’s lead in providing a regulatory environment,” he added.
READ: Lab-Grown Chicken Dishes to Sell for S $ 23 at the 1880 Private Members Club Next Month
After getting the green light from Singapore authorities to sell its lab-grown chicken product in November, the company plans to increase its investments in Singapore starting in 2021, it said. He hopes to hire process engineers, product developers, analytical chemists, and food scientists.
“I am not sure exactly how many jobs are related to him. But imagine a large manufacturing environment, working optimally for us 24/7 with the company’s support lab … we think it’s an important way to create jobs. ” .
Farmed chicken has been touted as the future of meat and a solution to unsustainable livestock and animal cruelty. The meat is also supposedly safer, as it is made in a sanitary laboratory setting, reducing the risk of zoonotic outbreaks.
A 2019 report from Barclays predicted that the global alternative meat market, currently valued at $ 14 billion, or 1% of the $ 1.4 trillion meat industry, could be worth 10 times more (about $ 140 billion). US dollars by 2029).
Eat Just received the world’s first regulatory approval to sell commercially lab-grown meat last month from the Singapore Food Agency, after applying for it two years ago. And in October, it announced that it would partner with private equity firm Proterra Investment Partners Asia to build a $ 120 million plant protein factory in Singapore that is expected to begin construction in the first quarter of 2021.
READ: Plant-based egg producer Eat Just to build factory in Singapore
Eat Just announced last week that its cultured chicken nuggets will make their world commercial debut in 1880, a private members club on Robertson Quay. The nuggets are priced at S $ 23 and are initially served as a combination of two dishes: chicken and waffles on one plate and chicken on a steamed Chinese bun on the other.
It will be sold in other food establishments in Singapore next year and in retail stores in mid to late 2022.
Josh Tetrick, co-founder and CEO of Eat Just, sits on bags of his mung bean protein at the company’s Appleton, Minnesota plant, December 2019 (Photo: Eat Just).
Developing the infrastructure and safety protocols to create the lab-grown chicken took about two years, Tetrick said. But now that the technology is ready, it takes 14 days to produce it, less than the 45 days it takes for traditional chickens to go from hatch to slaughter.
Mr. Tetrick said that this form of lab-grown chicken, a minced chicken product similar to the texture of nuggets sold in fast food restaurants, is only “stage one.” As his processes improve, he hopes to produce a more “highly textured” chicken with fat and muscle characteristics in two to three years.
The third stage would be to create a chicken wing, with bones and cartilage included.
READ: Comment: Lab Grown Meat First Approved In Singapore, But Will People Bite?
The startup also plans to produce other forms of its current lab chicken, for example, as a piece of breast, early next year, subject to approval from Singapore regulators.
Tetrick said Eat Just’s ultimate goal is to make cell-based meat that is cheaper than its traditional counterparts and normalize its consumption to the point where its “cultured” label is removed, hopefully as more people and Food establishments feel comfortable eating and serving it.
The company is also working on creating lab-grown beef and pork. It will likely be able to produce a ground meat product by the end of next year, Tetrick said.
Eat Just, valued at $ 1.2 billion and backed by companies like Temasek Holdings and Billionaire Li Ka-shing’s Horizons Ventures, aims to make an operating profit by the end of 2021 and could go public after that, Tetrick said previously.
