Portfolio Company CellX Raises US$ 6.5 million

Agronomics Limited

22 June 2023

 

22 June 2023

Agronomics Limited

("Agronomics" or the "Company")

Portfolio Company CellX Raises US$ 6.5 million in New Funding

Agronomics (ANIC:LSE), the leading listed company focused on the field of cellular agriculture, is pleased to announce that Chinese cultivated meat company, CellX Limited ("CellX"), has raised US$ 6.5 million in new funding from third parties to accelerate the development of its cultivated meat products as they near commercialisation.

Agronomics has invested a total of US$ 2.05 million in CellX since its inception in 2020, first investing US$ 50,000 in December 2020, followed by an additional investment of US$ 2 million in May 2022. The position, subject to audit, will now be carried at US$ 3.61 million, including an unrealised gain on cost of US$ 1.56 million on its total investment, representing an internal rate of return of 62% and a multiple on invested capital of 1.76x. The CellX position accounts for approximately 1.82% of the last published Net Asset Value of Agronomics (31 March 2023). Following the new funding round, Agronomics has an equity ownership of 4.98% on a fully diluted basis in CellX. To date, CellX has raised over US$ 20 million, making it what Agronomics believes to be China's most funded cellular agriculture startup.

CellX is a cellular agriculture company based in Shanghai, working to bring cultivated meat products to consumers in China and around the world. Founded in 2020, CellX has built research & development platforms across the four major technological pillars of cultivated meat, cell line development, media optimisation, novel bioprocess design, and end product innovation.

The latest funding round will finance CellX's move towards the pilot-scale production of its cultivated meat products. Of its more than 10 cell lines, CellX has already adapted five into suspension culturing, and the leading cell line has now entered the pilot stage. In just three years, CellX has also developed multiple serum-free media and improved the yield significantly - currently scaling up to 2,000L - enabling it to drastically reduce production costs.

Earlier this year, CellX announced its plan to build China's first cultivated meat pilot production facility, hosting multiple thousand-litre bioreactors to provide an interactive space for consumers to taste CellX's demo products. This facility will be China's first "transparent food space" for cultivated meat Research & Development, pilot production, and public tasting.

Jim Mellon, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Agronomics, said:

"We have backed CellX since the very beginning. The company is at the forefront of Cultivated Meat production in China and is on track to help serve one of the world's largest meat producers with a low-cost, ethical and sustainable alternative. This latest funding round will give them the necessary capital to continue on their path to scalability through pilot-scale production, continued research and development and public tasting exhibitions. CellX has made significant strides in just three years and is firmly on track to become a leader in the cultivated meat market."

Ziliang Yang, Co-Founder and CEO of CellX, said:

"Meat is a commodity that needs to be consistently produced at a competitive cost and large scale. Each year, China alone consumes over 100 million tons of meat, more than a quarter of global consumption. For cultivated meat to have a meaningful impact on our global food supply chain, production at low cost and at scale is key.

Unfortunately, no company in our space has fully cracked the puzzle of production at low cost and scale, as yet. This is where CellX and China can add value. Thanks to China's booming biopharma industry and fermentation sector, there is already an extensive ecosystem in place, including media and equipment at competitive pricing, as well as a large pool of talented bioprocess engineers. All of which will enable companies to produce cultivated meat at a significantly lower cost in China."

About CellX

CellX is a cellular agriculture company based in Shanghai, working to bring cultivated meat products to consumers in China and around the world. Its goal is to provide a sustainable source of animal protein, better health for all human beings, and improved animal welfare. Founded in 2020, CellX has built a top R&D team of 40 and raised US$ 20 million. The team focuses on building platform technologies with a multi-species approach.

CellX is collaborating with top universities and leading companies around the world to advance the commercialization of cultivated meat. The company is also accelerating market launch and cultivated meat approval in the APAC region

More information at www.cellx.cn

About Agronomics

Agronomics is a leading listed company with a focus on cellular agriculture and cultivated meat. The Company has established a portfolio of over 20 companies in this rapidly advancing sector. It seeks to secure minority stakes in companies owning technologies with defensible intellectual property that offer new ways of producing food and materials with a focus on products historically derived from animals. These technologies are driving a major disruption in agriculture, offering solutions to improve sustainability, as well as addressing human health, animal welfare and environmental damage. This disruption will decouple supply chains from the environment and animals and be fundamental to feeding the world's expanding population. A full list of Agronomics' portfolio companies is available at https://agronomics.im/.

About Cellular Agriculture

Cellular Agriculture is the production of agriculture products directly from cells, as opposed to raising an animal for slaughter or growing crops. This encompasses cell culture to produce cultivated meat and materials, and fermentation processes that harness a combination of molecular biology, synthetic biology, tissue engineering and biotechnology to massively simplify production methods in a sustainable manner.

Over the coming decades, the source of the world's food supply traditionally derived from conventional agriculture is going to change dramatically. We have already witnessed the first wave of this shift with the consumer adoption of plant-based alternative proteins but today, we are on the cusp of an even bigger wave of change. This is being facilitated by advances in cellular agriculture. This change is necessary, given scientists' claims that if we maintain existing animal protein consumption patterns, then we will not meet the Paris Agreement's goal of limiting warming to 1.5℃.

AT Kearney, a global consultancy firm, projects that cultivated meat's market share will reach 35% by 2040. This combined with the Good Food Institute's estimate that a US$ 1.8 trillion investment will be required in order to produce just 10% of the world's protein using this technology, means that we are on the cusp of a multi-decade flow of capital to build out manufacturing facilities. Funding in the field of cellular agriculture is accelerating, however, still, less than US$5 billion has been invested worldwide since the industry's inception in 2016.

For further information please contact:

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