Future Planet Capital (FPC), the international venture capital and impact investor, has revealed its participation in Edinburgh-based food & ag tech company Roslin Technologies’ latest £11m funding round, helping to fuel the company’s next wave of growth in its mission to become the leading provider of animal cell lines to the emerging cultivated meat sector.
Cultivated meat is meat grown directly from animal cells without the need to raise animals. Cultivated meat offers a promise to improve animal welfare, lower antibiotics use and reduce the environmental footprint of meat production. The cultivated meat sector is rapidly growing with billions of dollars invested to date, in over 100 active companies including global meat producers. To make cultivated meat viable, production cost needs to come down and products need to create great consumer satisfaction. High-quality cell lines are required to make cultivated meat safe, affordable, and nutritious.
Having made an initial investment of £10m in 2017, FPC has supported Roslin as it has grown from an initial concept to the revenue-generating commercial enterprise it is today through board representation, funding, and strategic commercial introductions. FPC also facilitated an introduction to the new King Charles at its leadership event at COP 26. As a long-term partner looking to profitably solve the world’s greatest challenges, FPC says it is now pleased to be making a substantial contribution to this latest round via its Blue Ocean mandate and its Challenge Response II (CRII) strategy.
This new funding will allow Roslin Tech to invest in expanding its cell line portfolio and further developing the protocols for scale-up its cells into competitive cell biomass for meat production. It will do so jointly with its customers, development collaborators, and the University of Edinburgh with which Roslin Tech has a privileged relationship. It will also invest in its insect venture which focuses on breeding better insects for the emerging insect protein sector, a promising regenerative agricultural technique.
Guy Pengelley, investment director at Future Planet Capital, said: “Roslin’s ambitions to create disruptive biotechnologies to improve how proteins are made, very much aligns with FPC’s mission to deliver returns while tackling the world’s greatest challenges. As an early investor, we’re delighted to be in the position to continue to back their both their momentum and continued growth and are excited to see what more we can achieve together over the longer term.”
Ernst van Orsouw, CEO of Roslin Tech, says: “This round is a real milestone for Roslin Tech as we look to expand, but also to have received such strong recognition and support not just from new investors but also from those that have already been an integral part of our journey so far.
“We are proud to have recieved this continued support from Future Planet Capital. As firm believers of long term partnerships, in the five years we have worked together they’ve already shown the value add they can provide beyond the initial capital and we are pleased to have received this latest show of commitment in our future ambitions.”
