Meeting the meat challenge: Startup prepares for capacity crunch

In New York, newly launched Ark Biotech is preparing for cultivated meat’s next big cost hurdle: infrastructure. More specifically, the company is developing equipment and software that will enable cultivated meat firms to move from pilot plants into larger-scale production. 

McKinsey & Co. recently predicted the cultivated meat market to be worth $25 billion by 2030, but also noted that cost and scale will be a challenge. Capacity will be an issue, however; Primary Venture Capital estimates that if every pharma bioreactor in the US was instead producing cultivated meet, it would take an entire year to fulfill one day of American meat demand. 

Ark’s launch comes as other service providers to lab-grown meat work to lower the cost of production medium—considered another major obstacle to cultivated meat adoption.