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Lab-grown milk start-up raises $25m

Jessica Sier
Jessica SierJournalist

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Synthetic dairy producer All G Foods has raised $25 million to turbocharge the production of its milk alternative, with UK-based Agronomics leading the round and promising to lend its precision fermentation plants to help scale the fledgling start-up’s manufacturing plans.

Cellular agricultural firm Agronomics has tipped in $15 million through its UK-listed entity and another $10 million through another affiliated investment vehicle. This $25 million is the first part of a larger announcement set for release in a few months.

Jan Pacas has banked $25m from UK-based Agronomics.  

In its Waterloo-based laboratory, All G Foods has developed a synthetic milk product using cellular agriculture science. At its core, the team have built a large bioreactor into which water, sugar and microbes programmed with the DNA of milk are poured, to create cellular-grown dairy products.

“Over the next seven years we aim to make it cheaper to buy than cow-based dairy,” Jan Pacas, founder and chief executive of All G Foods, said.

The 18-month-old company, which already generates “more than $3 million but less than $10 million” through its plant-based meat business, aims to ultimately follow a2 Milk’s success in the Chinese market.

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But before it can sell its synthetic milk to its target markets in China, Singapore and Australia, it requires regulatory approval from Australian authorities.

Mr Pacas hopes the tick will be given this year, but until then All G Foods will focus on getting its milk product into markets in Singapore, where cell-based meat is already approved.

All G Foods is the first Australian company with a technique for cellular milk and joins the ranks of global players such as US-based Perfect Day, which uses genetically modified fungi to produce milk protein for ice cream.

TurtleTree and Better Milk, also based in the US, are engineering mammary cells to produce human and cow milk in laboratories.

Although Mr Pacas cannot confirm when the milk will be available on shelves, he has been busy developing relationships with Woolworths and Metcash, which already deliver All G Food’s plant-based products.

“We hope to just hook the synthetic milk onto that distribution method,” he said.

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The strategic investment from Agronomics is also slated to give All G Foods access to the UK company’s fermentation facilities, which are being built offshore.

“We have the science, but the biggest bottleneck is manufacturing,” Mr Pacas said. “We don’t use the earth, water, cows, or anything from the existing manufacturing industry so using Argonomics’ fermentation tanks and bioreactors will give us huge leverage.”

Jessica Sier writes on technology, internet culture, cryptocurrencies and software from our Sydney newsroom. She has previously covered global capital markets and economics. Connect with Jessica on Twitter. Email Jessica at jessica.sier@afr.com

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