Investee Company Update: CellX
7th February 2023
Agronomics Limited
("Agronomics" or the "Company")
CellX and Tofflon to Build China's First Pilot Production Facility for Cultivated Meat
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 signed a strategic partnership agreement with food manufacturing specialists Shanghai Tofflon Science and Technology Co., Ltd. ("Tofflon") aiming to accelerate the scale-up of cultivated meat in the Asian market with a new purpose-built facility.
● CellX and Tofflon will build China's first pilot facility for cultivated meat
● The facility will allow CellX to scale up its suspension cell lines in serum-free media at thousand-litre scale
● The facility will be China's first "transparent food space" for cultivated meat R&D, pilot production, and public tasting
Agronomics has invested a total of US$ 2,050,000 since CellX inception, first investing US$ 50,000 in December 2020 before investing a further US$ 2,000,000 in May 2022 . The position is carried at US$ 2,538,117 million, including an unrealised gain on cost of US$ 488,117 on the initial investment made in 2020, and accounts for approximately 1.4% of the last published Net Asset Value of Agronomics (31.12.22). Agronomics has an equity ownership of 5.14% on a fully diluted basis in CellX.
The full announcement is set out below without any material changes.
Shanghai, February 5, 2023 - On February 1st, CellX (Shanghai Shiwei Biotechnology Co., Ltd.) and Tofflon (Shanghai Tofflon Science and Technology Co., Ltd.) signed a strategic partnership agreement with Xiaodong Zheng (Chairman of Tofflon) and Ziliang Yang (Co-founder and CEO of CellX) representing both companies. They will work together in the field of cultivated meat, developing innovative equipment and building a pilot production plant, as well as local and global facilities for commercial production.
The two companies hope to leverage CellX's technical expertise in cultivated meat and Tofflon's extensive biological equipment & production capability to accelerate the scaling up of CellX's cultivated meat products.
During the signing event, CellX and Tofflon shared the rendering of China's first pilot facility for cultivated meat. The plant will allow CellX to scale up its suspension cell lines in serum-free media at thousand-litre scale. It will also be equipped with Tofflons' digital and intelligent equipment management systems.
The facility will host multiple thousand-litre bioreactors and will provide an interactive space for consumers to taste CellX's demo products. It will be China's first "transparent food space" for cultivated meat R&D, pilot production, and public tasting, and will be completed within a year.
Mr. Zheng delivered a speech at the event, expressing his firm beliefs in the cultivated meat industry and CellX's R&D progress.
"CellX is the leading cultivated meat company in China. It has built R&D platforms across the four major technological pillars of cultivated meat - cell line development, media optimization, novel bioprocess design, and end product innovation. Cultivated meat is a promising application of biotechnology in the field of food tech. With the experience and expertise accumulated in the field of biopharma and food production, Tofflon will help CellX to speed the scaling up of its cultivated meat products and it hopes to contribute to a sustainable future for humankind", he said.
Mr Yang also shared CellX's latest R&D progress and strategic plans for the future. "Besides being the world's largest meat market, China is also an emerging leader in the field of bio-manufacturing. Thanks to its booming biotech industry, China is quickly building a strong infrastructure and supply chain. Tofflon is one of the world's leading providers of comprehensive solutions for drug and food manufacturing, and their equipment and technologies can be quickly applied to the field of cultivated meat.
"As part of our strategic partnership, the construction of a pilot facility is the cornerstone of CellX's journey to scale up cultivated meat production in China. I look forward to working with Tofflon to bring cultivated meat to consumers in China and around the world", Yang said.
As a branch of cellular agriculture, cultivated meat produces animal meat directly from animal cells in large-scale bioreactors. This new production method is more efficient and sustainable than traditional factory farming methods.
In the future, CellX and Tofflon will work together to bring cultivated meat to consumers in China and around the world.
About Tofflon
Tofflon (Stock Code: SZ 300171) was founded in 1993 and listed on the China Shenzhen Stock Exchange in 2011. Based in Shanghai, Tofflon provides process support, core equipment, consumables, and system engineering solutions for global drug and food manufacturing. Focusing on the study of drug manufacturing science and integrating knowledge of drug processes and pharma equipment, Tofflon can meet the needs of scientific research, pilot test, and commercial production at various stages. Since its foundation, Tofflon has supplied more than 3000 companies across the world.
Tofflon has established collaborations with pharmaceutical and biopharma companies around the world and accumulated a wealth of pharmaceutical and biopharma engineering technology, core equipment manufacturing technology, and engineering design cases. By focusing on cutting-edge technologies in the pharmaceutical industry, exploring innovative drug manufacturing models, and building an advanced drug manufacturing platform, Tofflon has grown from a "System Solution Supplier" to a "Smart Pharma Factory Builder".
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 $15M+. 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 alternative proteins 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.
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