Fishing for Progress in Asia: Avant Meats

by Paul Shapiro | April 26, 2024

Asia is leading the world when it comes to semiconductors, solar panels, wind turbines, and other technologies critical for the future. In a time when several US states are seeking to ban the sale of cultivated meat, Asia seems to be leaning into the technology, and one of the most mature companies in the space there is Avant Meats. 

Founded in Hong Kong in 2018 and having raised about $15 million USD to date, Avant Meats is focused on making a dent in Asian seafood demand. In this episode, Avant founder and CEO Carrie Chan discusses why her focus is seafood, what scale she’s at and where she hopes to soon go, and how long she thinks it will be before cultivated fish might reach one percent market share in Asia. 

As you’ll hear in this conversation, Avant Meats is already animal component-free in its feedstock for its fish cells, and it’s cultivating inside a 250L bioreactor to generate the material for its public tastings. Now headquartered in Singapore, the company intends to grow there and eventually branch throughout Asia, a project for which it’s currently fundraising.

Discussed in this episode

More about Carrie Chan

Carrie Chan is the co-founder and CEO of Avant Meats. She’s a seasoned business executive with a passion for the environment, particularly the impact of our food supply on the planet. With experiences in strategy and general management, she also managed major greenfield Capex projects from conception to revenue-generating operations. She is a Bloomberg New Economy Catalyst 2022 and holds an MBA from INSEAD.

Carrie co-founded Avant with Dr Mario Chin in 2018 in Hong Kong, the first cultivated fish company in Asia, and expanded to Singapore in 2021. Avant’s technology offers a system to produce nutritious, tasty fish and functional proteins directly from fish cells at economically viable costs. The group’s end-to-end technology platform also allows continuous new product development from scratch to production.  

Avant aims to be a global leader in producing traceable and sustainably cultivated proteins in a fully contained environment for food, skincare, and functional applications. Avant now has a presence in Singapore and Greater China. Avant has also been awarded Technology Pioneer and Global Innovator by the World Economic Forum and featured in Reuters, Financial Times, TIME, Forbes, The Telegraph, South China Morning Post, and CCTV. For more information, please visit www.avantmeats.com.

At Avant, Carrie provides the vision, guides the strategy and supervises the implementation. 

Business for Good Podcast Episode 139 - Carrie Chan, CEO of Avant Meats

Paul Shapiro: [00:00:00] Carrie, welcome to the business for good podcast.

Carrie Chan: Thank you Paul for having me today.

Paul Shapiro: Hey, it's my pleasure. We've gotten to be speakers on panels together before, but we've never really gotten a chance to have a one on one conversation. So I'm very excited to be talking with you all the way from Singapore.

I think that you started the company in Hong Kong, but then moved to Singapore, that's right. Correct. Correct.

Carrie Chan: We expanded to Singapore in 2021.

Paul Shapiro: Okay. And what led you to go from Hong Kong to Singapore? Was it the eat just regulatory approval that happened in Singapore? or was there some other reason you wanted to go there?

Carrie Chan: The strategy was plotted back in 2020 before we knew that the, the approval,December the second, I remember woke up to read the news on the 2nd of December, 2020. But, before that, we are already plotting the plan to, expand to Singapore. Reason being that, Hong Kong is a very good starting point for a biotech setup, but then, there is, not, ecosystem for bioprocess,industry.

For example, there's no [00:01:00] talent in the bioprocess. Industry because there is no pharmaceutical or drug manufacturing within Hong Kong. So we find that there's a challenges of recruiting talent as well as having the ecosystem of suppliers. So we basically need to, we need to go to other places and Singapore.

It's a very obvious destination within Asia at that time.

Paul Shapiro: Nice. Okay. cool. Well, I hope to be over there. I shamefully have never been to Hong Kong or Singapore. I guess I've been in the Hong Kong airport, but I've never left the left the airport and I've never even been in an airport on Singapore. So I would love to, to to correct that.

but for now, let me ask you this just to get started. I mean, you know very well that in countries like the United States, There's a lot of malaise seemingly around cultivated meat. Many news headlines seem to paint a grim picture. Journalists are writing the obituaries for this industry before it's even gotten out of the cradle, so to speak.

Is that [00:02:00] the same in Asia? Is there a similar sentiment that has taken hold there? Or is it not true that in Singapore people are feeling this way?

Carrie Chan: Yeah, in Singapore, I think in particular, I think generally the general impression of the trend, the sentiment is still very supportive for alternative protein and cultivated meat.

But what you mentioned that trend, I do see that creeping up in different parts of parts of the world, like including Europe as well. so, hopefully it will not be getting into too much of a momentum here in Asia. I think the, the, the, The concern stakeholder or, political related kind of like, side of thing is a little bit different here.

So hopefully that will not be developed in, in, in that magnitude. yeah,

Paul Shapiro: is most of the funding for Avant meets coming from Western venture capital funds, or is it coming from Asian funds as well, or, or Zoe?

Carrie Chan: Yeah. so our investor, [00:03:00] cap table basically quite balanced internationally. So, we do have a major lead investor, S2G from us for our series a,the remaining part of the cap table is or, spread out across different parts of the world.

so, yeah, and at the moment we, we see that it's not a major that the topic that you raised now has not been a, a, a factor in our conversation with potential investors.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah, I know you've raised a good amount of money so far. I think you initially raised 3 million and then in 2022 you raised another, 11 million.

And you're focused really on seafood, right? So, you know, you've got other companies that are working on fish or excuse me, on chicken or on beef. And you all like the folks at blue Nalu, who we recently had on this podcast as well, are focused really on fish. And for listeners who aren't familiar with Asian seafood consumption, it is really remarkable, you know, China alone, China alone [00:04:00] produces more than a third of all of the world's seafood and it consumes nearly half of the world's seafood.

And so in China, they consume 65 million tons. million tons, 65 million tons of seafood annually, whereas in the U. S. it's about 7 million tons annually. So just for perspective, you can see the dramatic popularity of seafood in places like China and in other Asian countries compared to the United States and other Western countries.

So what type of fish or other aquatic animal meats are you all making? And then let's talk about the scale at which you are making it, Kerry.

Carrie Chan: Yeah, sure. So we have, several, already developed, immortalized, cell line. As we know, we need to start with cell line and, we have grouper, we have eel, we have, snapper, we have, minnow.

And so, there are different stage of the development. we also actually have,actually an other,a marine creature that we actually, have experience, developing cell line. But That, we work on a relatively still most, so we [00:05:00] will, we look forward to actually,elaborate that once it is ready.

So basically at the moment we're focusing on the, fish species that I've just mentioned. our Singapore plant has, already scaled up to pilot production. So we are running a,a couple of, hundred liter of bioreactor in single use bioreactor at the moment. to stop producing, some material so that we can continue to do a lot of product development, on the, different foot formulation, et cetera.

Paul Shapiro: So you have a couple of 100 liter reactors that are single use. How much does that enable you to produce? I know you've done public tastings of these products, so you're producing enough for tastings, but obviously you're not going to be able to produce commercially out of a pilot plant, but what can you produce?

Carrie Chan: Yeah, so we have a 50 liter and then we have a 250 liter and, and they allow us to produce kind of multiple, multiple, let's say, tens of, kilograms of,cell mass. And then depending on the product formulation, the percentage of cell in the end product. [00:06:00] that will transfer to the translate into the respective amount of the product we can produce with that, which is pretty reasonable sizable that we can throw a tasting event.

As you mentioned, we held an event close to event and of, last year, hosting about 30 people. that output is easily can be done,in that, in that context. Yeah.

Paul Shapiro: Is it easy to grow fish cells compared to chicken or beef cells? I'll give you an example. Lou Cooperhouse, the CEO of blue Nalu has made the point to me before that.

The bioreactors can be kept at a lower temperature because fish are cold blooded animals, whereas obviously chickens and cows are warm blooded animals, and so it's less energy intensive, apparently, to grow fish cells than to grow chicken or cow cells. Is that your experience?

Carrie Chan: Yeah, indeed, the temperature that we need to keep for the cell culture is lower than mammalian cells.

So in generally, that is, that is pretty [00:07:00] true. so we also do not need to keep our cell, for example, to 37 or even beyond that for, for what I understand some of the cell actually require that level or even higher level of temperature.

Paul Shapiro: That's really interesting. So, okay, if, if that is so, do you think that there is, there are other advantages aside from temperature?

from what I've heard, it's actually easier just independent of temperature, but just, just easier to tame these fish cells. Is that accurate? Or have I been miss, have I been misinformed on this?

Carrie Chan: Well, I think, it is difficult to put fingers on it, but based on the trend and the pattern that what we have.

Because obviously a lot of the company like ourselves, we only work on one animal species like be it fish, chicken or pork or, or beef, but then we don't, very few of us actually work across different kind of species. So we cannot, we cannot do a very direct comparison, but we can only gauge what we [00:08:00] understand from what we read in the public domain.

indeed, I think the, depending on the, I think it's also depending on the cell line. the different role of, setting up the cell line would also meet that the, the nutrient requirement of the cell line to maintain the status of the, proliferation or the production will be a bit different. But in that sense, I think, we use a pretty, direct approach to come up with a cell line, which is a spontaneous immortalization.

And with that, I think the, that gives us a very typically, simpler kind of like growth condition required for the fish cells to grow. so that is kind of this two factors are related species as well as a cell line, as well as the medium that, the nutrient required to sustain the process.

Paul Shapiro: Great. Okay. very cool. Very cool. So, It. Carrie, you, you mentioned that you're operating a 250 liter bioreactor and, and a 50 liter reactor, and that you're able to produce tens of kilos of animal cell mass at a time, [00:09:00] which you would add, presumably to plant-based material to maybe double or so the amount of product of finished good that you can make.

Just to be clear, I, I believe that you all advertise that you don't use animal ingredients in your, in your media, right? You're not using any animal inputs at all in this process.

Carrie Chan: Correct. what we are running the pilot, run now is actually animal component free. so what we find that, after we remove the fetal bovine serum, indeed, some of the ingredient is still sourced from animal source.

And, so we did actually, done further R and D to replace those with animal component free. So it's a bit more stringent requirement actually. so our, our medium now for pilot is actually ACF.

Paul Shapiro: and so ACF, meaning animal component free, does it work just as well? And is it as, is it as expensive or cheaper to go ACF?

Carrie Chan: It's definitely cheaper because, FES is expensive and some of the animal base are generally more expensive. So ACF is, generally, more cost effective. As well as refilling the, [00:10:00] environmental kind of like, requests. And so the cells

Paul Shapiro: grow it, the cells grow in the same way and they grow as fast as if you were using, you know, animal serum.

Carrie Chan: So it's very comparable. Yeah.

Paul Shapiro: Amazing. Now I've often wondered, and maybe you know something about this. If all of these companies in the cultivated meat industry in the last few years claim that they've moved away from using fetal bovine serum, right? So in the pharma industry, it's been very typical to use FBS, which is why the companies in the space have been using it.

But if they've really innovated ways to get around it, why would anybody use it? Like in the pharmaceutical industry, if you can grow with ACF and it's cheaper, why wouldn't everybody, even outside of cultivated meat, who might be an FBS customer, switch to that? Are you aware? Are people in pharma switching now that these new innovations in animal component free media has been, have been innovated?

Carrie Chan: Yeah, you're right. Actually, ACF is not a new concept for cultivated meat. It actually exists in the pharmaceutical, sector as well. because I think the FBS has a problem with the,potential risks. For example, the [00:11:00] mad cow disease back, a couple of decades, quality control and variation from one batch to the other is also one of the challenge for pharmaceutical production.

So to my understanding,a certain percentage, at least of the pharmaceutical process, wherever they will be suitable to do that, they use ACF approach. To coming up with the culture medium.

Paul Shapiro: Well, that is really interesting. I wonder like, you know, how, how has the industry that sells FBS, have they suffered as a result of this?

You know, like, is this kind of like, you know, the first animal based industry to actually be negatively impacted by the cultivated meat industry? That would be quite interesting if that turned out to be true.

Carrie Chan: Yeah, I, I, I hope so. although, there are quite a lot of R and D will still rely on FBS because FBS is the always go to at the get go with any cell line that people will start, they will start with FBS, be it 20 percent or 10 percent is basically want to make sure that the process can be established [00:12:00] in the cell cell primary culture.

And then they try to face it, face it out. Okay. But then it will still be quite popular among R and D. But I, I agree with you are totally, I totally support that. If down the line, the ACF approach could be more prevalent, not just in cultivated meat sector, but other sector, there will be very much like ideal.

Yeah.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah, well, if there's somebody listening to this podcast and you know that the people who make FBS have been negatively impacted by the cultivated meat folks, I would be thrilled to hear about it. Just send me a message via the website business for good podcast dot com. I would love to hear from you about that.

Okay, let's go now to Singapore. I believe that you have filed already for regulatory approval in Singapore. Is that correct?

Carrie Chan: Yeah, so we have submitted and working with the S. F. A. But it is going to be a few quarters, kind of several months of processes. So finger cross. We're expecting to going through the process at this year.

Paul Shapiro: Great. Have you filed for regulatory approval in other jurisdictions aside from [00:13:00] Singapore?

Carrie Chan: At the moment we're focusing on Singapore, but we have been basically keeping track very closely, of course, with the U. S. Israel is a new development, but of course it may not be a market that we will particularly focusing on in the near term.

but we have actually, actually follow quite a lot about development within the other countries in Asia. So to mention a little bit, we are part of the, APEC, Society for Cellular Agriculture. It is a group of company in this space, only working on cultivated meat in Asia, from, from Hong Kong, China, Singapore, Korea, Japan, et cetera.

we joined together, actually do a lot of work related to, regulatory. pathway as well as,public domain and consumer education. So through those, platform for that platform and, our activity, we kind of take into a lot of development, what is happening in different countries in government agencies, yeah, in this region.

Paul Shapiro: Nice. And it's interesting. You mentioned [00:14:00] Israel because we recently had on Didier too, via the CEO of Aleph farms, and even though their company is based in Israel, they're looking to open their first pilot plant in Southeast Asia, in Thailand. So, you know, the, while Israel is like the Mecca for cultivated meat companies, it seems in terms of founding them, it's such a tiny market.

There's so few people who live there. That it seems like they all want to go start selling in places like the U S or, Singapore, Southeast Asia, China, and so, and so on. So, it's, it's, it's really, really something. obviously Israel has been a very friendly market for cultivated meat and alternative protein in general.

Singapore is the same, the same as so for the U S, where you have a huge number of the cultivated meat companies based. What about China? I know the, I know that Avant was started in Hong Kong, but we have this sense in the United States that China has a Taken the lead on so many [00:15:00] technologies, right? Or at least Asia has, if you look at semiconductors, right?

We are importing nearly all of our semiconductors from Taiwan. If you look at, solar panels, wind turbines being produced in Asia. In fact, the solar panels on my own roof were produced in China. And so there's a sense that we in the U S don't want to fall behind when it comes to clean proteins, right?

We've already fallen behind on semiconductors and clean energy. Are we going to fall behind? What do you think? Is China and Asia positioning itself to be the leaders in cultivated meat? Is the government there friendlier? As you know, we have legislation in the U. S. right now seeking to restrict cultivated meat, not to support it.

But when we hear about China, we hear that the opposite is so, that part of China's plan is to actually be a leader in this. So as somebody who actually lives in the region, what do you think? Is China and Asia going to be positioning itself to be a leader in cultivated meat?

Carrie Chan: Right. that's very good question.

So, on two levels on the, on the [00:16:00] regulatory level, which is more drilling into the technicality of giving approval for any company to start selling to the public. Right. I think that the, the US, FDA framework, as well as the Singapore SFA framework is generally a bit more, open. As well as a little bit more approachable.

indeed, there are quite a lot of development, in China related to the regulatory development. so we have been in multiple conversations with development agency. And so the, the, the, the framework is under development, but, it's good that it's actually, is under development because, obviously China started working on the regulatory development.

A few years later than the other countries such as, Singapore and, and us, but indeed they're working on it now. on the technicality level, what we get, the sense at the moment is that the, the, the regulator in China tends, has the, potentially be a little bit more, stringent in, in the process.

That means that the approval process would be,[00:17:00] bit more elaborate or a bit, maybe a little bit longer. so that's, on one part. but on the other side, whether the, the policy on the high level, will be very, like different. I think that is a totally, different from the regulatory,compliance aspect.

It's more related to the policy, whether, the country supports. the development of the technology on that set on that aspect. I think indeed, it does cultivate that meat fall into the,the country, direction to develop when it comes to increasing food security. For example, it was in the, most recent 5 year plan.

like the government announced that the area that the country will focus in the upcoming years. And I think that is the, any bioeconomy, the biosynthetic and coding cultivated meat is under that bracket. So which is actually a good thing. at the moment, how much resources or support that will be actually, funneled into development of this technology?

I, we, we don't have the [00:18:00] number as yet. but, the positive side is that it is on the, on the agenda, on the strategy. But, I, I think that, At least on my end, I see that there are some funding supporting the development of this technology, but it's not a massive scale at the moment. So it's still maybe a little bit too early to say.

yeah, that is what we, that is what I know, from our, from our, perspective.

Paul Shapiro: Got it. Okay. do you think that the environment in mainland China is ripe for cultivated meat startups to get started? I know you started in Hong Kong and eventually moved to Singapore, but what about mainland China?

Carrie Chan: Yeah, you ask a very good question here.

I think for startup, where is the good place to start? is down to where the, the company has the, has the ecosystem or support to actually, start R and D as well as have a route to commercialization, such that they can attract investors. So if [00:19:00] we use that as a, as a deduction, then that means that I think R and D of course, mainland China is a lot of research institute.

They're highly capable of doing R and D, but when it comes to the regulation and the, the route to commercialization, cultivate them in China, it will still be a few years time. And the path is not very clear at the moment. So that means that it will be pretty much challenging at this point of time, as of today, to to find investor if it is purely based in the China market.

So this is what I would say. but this kind of thing can change, pretty quickly in the, in the next, in the next one to two years, when the, when the regulatory kind of pathway become a little bit more visible, it may come back because obviously the market is big and there are certain high level policy support at like what I've just mentioned.

but in the near term, I think it will still be challenging because any startup like in our position, it is quite capital intensive, right? So we do need to, find investor [00:20:00] and the investor would definitely ask how is the commercialization timeline and route for the jurisdiction that the company is based in.

So because of that, I think it will be still. Need to have a very much like a creative strategy if, if the company want to start in China, but once you also cater, to get the, like, capital market funding.

Paul Shapiro: Great. So let's talk about what you just mentioned, the timeline for commercialization. You're running at largest right now, a 250 liter reactor.

You've stated publicly that your goal is to fundraise and move to, I think, a 2000 liter reactor, right? So how much will a 2000 liter reactor allow you to produce? And when do you think you could be producing? You know, if today somebody listening to this podcast funded your entire next round, they said, okay, you know, carry, we're gonna give you everything you need for your next round.

How soon would it be before you could be not only building a 2000 liter system, but actually selling from it, presuming you had regulatory authority and how much would you be selling?

Carrie Chan: Yeah. So, the [00:21:00] 2000, liter director will, basically the projection of the, It will be actually linear, extension from what we can do now at the smaller size before any further improvement of our optimization of process and the timeline because of the we're doing the design now, actually, and then the implementation will take place sometime in, in 2025.

So we're looking at towards end of 2025. Then we can actually start, larger scale of commercialization at that point. But, if we get actually our SFA approval, before that, we might be, doing smaller scale kind of commercialization in Singapore.

Paul Shapiro: Do you think that 2000 liters is what is what you would consider commercial scale, or is that more like a larger pilot plan?

Carrie Chan: Yeah, that's very good question. I think I have heard different kind of approaches in this industry. I've heard, the effort actually planned to go up to 2000 liters. [00:22:00] 10, 000 liter director, etcetera. I think it will be very down to different markets. So for example, in Singapore, where, I come from a property development and reassay.

So I pretty set a very sensitive to that because a lot of the location of the factory that we can build our facility is not greenfield project. So it's not on the ground. So that means that we need to set ourselves up inside a factory building. So that means that there are certain restrictions in terms of the height, the loading and the size of the bioreactor we can keep.

And so I think that is one of the driving force. in terms of the larger size that what we can put, of course, it is a in a market whereby there are quite a bit of abundant of open space. Of course, the size of the commercial directorship can be and should be larger. that's 1 consideration. The other consideration is that we're also looking at the flexibility of different batches as well as the risk of contaminant contamination, for example.

If I have a [00:23:00] very big batch, like 10, 000 liter director and, any, any, any issue with any, batch, I think it will be quite a bit of a very sizable kind of like risk as well. So that means that, in, in addition to scaling up, there are also the option of scaling out, which is actually doing. multiple, medium size, large size of director versus doing one super large size of director.

I think that will be very much down to different companies and different market situation to, to make the best sense of that,

Paul Shapiro: right? Yeah, on past episodes recently on this podcast, we've had very varied opinions about this. So Nia Gupta from fork and goods said that she could envision a. A craft brewery, so to speak, that has a ton, you know, several 1000 liter reactors, where somebody like Josh Tetrick from good meat wants to build, you know, a quarter million liter reactor, right?

Like something that's just absolutely gigantic and much, much bigger than what has been envisioned by some others. [00:24:00] Here and they're definitely different cost structures and risks and benefits associated with that. And it's hard to tell what may end up happening. But how long do you think it will take to get to those scales?

So you're saying that the produce is linear. So if in a 250 liter reactor, you're producing tens of kilos. I presume that's per run and each one might take a couple of weeks. Is that correct? And so what, let's just say generously, you can do 20 runs a year and you're, you know, let's just say you're going to produce 50 kilos.

So, you know, you're producing thousands of kilos or tens of thousands of kilos. If you were to, you know, continuously operate in a two 50. So how many can you produce in 2000? Well, what, let's just say, then you might be able to produce. Even a million tons. Let's I mean, a million kilos. Let's just say that that's it.

It's not going to be that much, but just for the sake of of, you know, let's say you're wildly successful and it's more productive than you would have imagined. As we were [00:25:00] pointing out, Asia consumes alone 65 million tons, 65 million tons of seafood. So how long do you think it will be before Even 1 percent of China's fish consumption is coming from cultivated meat.

you think that's happening 5, 10, 15, 25 years away? Like, what do you think it'll take to get to 1 percent of 65 million tons?

Carrie Chan: Yeah, this is a very good question. I think one side, there are two factors at play here. One is of course, the, the production capacity, which we have, I think it is actually the most recent industry discussion about the CapEx investment in all of this plans and the time, the lead time to build all of this.

I think that is, one aspect of the, of the factor affecting, that could be. That on, on, on it alone may take some time. And then the other is the, it's [00:26:00] the market, consumer, getting familiar with this new tech food. And which I think human actually that part will be maybe taking. Well, with a bit of luck, I think if there is something like what we see in the oatmeal like dairy alternative, maybe that will all of a sudden kind of shoot up or sudden with a lot of, product kind of happening in the market.

but generally human,

Paul Shapiro: but, but even with demand, even, even if the demand is there, I mean, 1 percent of 65 million tons. If my math is correct, it's still 650 million pounds, you know, like 650 million or excuse me, kilos, actually. So, you know, that is a, you know, it's it's so hard to imagine how we're going to get there.

I mean, maybe I'm being, maybe I'm not thinking about it properly. What do you think? Like, The quantity of bioreactor space [00:27:00] that would be needed to get there. It seems so vast.

Carrie Chan: Yeah. I, well, okay. So to get, to get back to the question, more specifically, a bit more on the high level, I, I agree with you.

Let's say the consume, the consumption are there. how, how much do we, how quickly can we get to that point? I think if you ask me on the optimistic side, I think. We might be able to reach that in 10, 15 years. we don't need to build out a big plant in multiple places. it can be actually, a very decentralized approach where different city, different towns that they have.

Individual kind of local operator can be licensed to have a set of this, right. and then they can actually already produced for the, for the, for the neighborhood, for the, for the, for the region that they cater for. And I think that can happen simultaneously at multiple places throughout, throughout the world, throughout Asia at the same time.

if you look at [00:28:00] the real estate, the, the amount of, I think people ask about, okay, the number of, the, the stainless steel and the amount of the, material to give in building this plant that is massive. if you look in, if you look into, any compared to other township development infrastructure, if you look at Shenzhen, I think Shenzhen was developed in the past, maybe 20, 30 years.

from a very much like quiet, fishing village to now a metropolis. And how much resources and what is the scale of development in that you can see a lot of the things is actually, possible. yeah, with the right factors in place.

Paul Shapiro: Okay. okay. I'll, I'll make sure to link to that transformation there, for sure at business for good podcast.

com. I do want to ask you, Carrie, if the problem for you right now is capital or is it still. Technological development that needs to occur. If you had, you know, somebody who came in and, and gave you a hundred [00:29:00] million dollars, would you have solved the technological challenges that you need to solve in order to commercially produce at an economical scale?

Or would you still have more r and d that needs to be done first before you can actually get to that place where you're selling? Millions of kilos a year,

Carrie Chan: I would say that 95 percent of the technical already clear so we can actually produce in a very steady output level. but I would say that at the moment, the, the output percentage or the cell mass is not optimized.

It's just like when I, I, I have not been maxed out on my production capacity. Let's say my, 2000 liter, bar reactor, I can produce that much of today. Of course I want to produce more. By optimizing my process, or making, for example, the cell density higher, for example, and using less medium, for example.

So that is, what we are actually working on now. but at the base, where we [00:30:00] start, we can stop producing. we have everything already on board.

Paul Shapiro: That's great. That's great. Okay. Well, I hope that you do find that investor, Carrie, who's going to let you start at least building the plane before you start flying. And so you can get a head start there. Let me ask you if there are any resources that have been helpful for you. You've been running this company now for six years.

Surely you've learned a lot in about startups and cultivated meat in the six years they've been running it. Are there any resources that have been helpful for you? And your journey as an entrepreneur that you would recommend to others who want to follow in your footsteps or do something good for the world themselves.

Carrie Chan: Yeah, I actually think that it is a very, very, very amazing kind of ecosystem. This first day I actually started the company, unlike in other kind of tech trend, for example, fintech or whatever, where the startup the, the start of founders would need to map out quite a lot of things themselves.

But here I think there's a lot of,kind of like [00:31:00] very nice people and mission aligned people like yourself, Paul, as well as like GFI, as well as some of these NGO. They actually done a lot of ground works for us before we even started the company. Like, have a summary about what is the technology landscape out there.

and what are the challenges? And actually it was very helpful when I started to position what we, what we work on in terms of the project, as well as the product and the strategy as well. And along the way, a lot of, conversation like this also have with. Promoting and getting more people know about this technology.

I think I am very grateful for this. I do not see this, to be honest in some other In some other tech space. like let's say FinTech, what I just mentioned. So I think this is a very, very unique for this industry because I think, at least a major bulk of us actually sustainably driven and very mission aligned, which is a very appreciative of.[00:32:00]

Paul Shapiro: Got it. Okay. And are there any companies that you wish exist that that don't yet exist? Anything that you hope that somebody who wants to make a difference, maybe they want to start a company like you did and they don't know what to do. What do you think the world needs?

Carrie Chan: Yeah, I think, where, that is partly cover here is that the CapEx, I think, quite a number of us, including some of our investors, always wondering, wondering where are the CDMO for cultivated meat?

Where are the CDMO company for cultivated meat? Are they there already? where do, where do we find them? the answer is that I think, they are not there yet. there are company, doing pharmaceutical CDMO would want to branch off to cultivated meat. But in terms of the cost structure, price structure is still not work it out yet.

So I hope that someone who will, that, that is what we need actually in the next phase to actually, accelerate quite a bit of this production capacity increase.

Paul Shapiro: So kind of like what liberation [00:33:00] labs is seeking to do for precision fermentation, you know, in Indiana, in the United States, they're building.

A precision fermentation CDMO. Like they only want to build the hardware so that other people can come in and put their organisms in there. So, so it's a big bet. we'll see if it pays off for them, but I saw they just put up their first bioreactor, which looked, looked, looked pretty cool. some very tall and thin, they're posting photos on LinkedIn of it.

I'll, I'll include those on the show notes for this episode of business for good podcast. Dot com. But for now, Carrie, I want to say thank you. I really appreciate all that you were doing to advance the cultivated meat space. It's a real pleasure to get to talk with you and I'll be rooting for you as you continue to fundraise and get to that next 2000 liter stage for the company.

Carrie Chan: Thank you so much for.

Paul Shapiro: And I want to say before we go, I really appreciate that in your background, listeners will not be able to see this since we don't actually publish the video of these interviews. But in Carrie's background, she has a Vitamix. That's the one thing that you can see, which is I've often said, if there's a [00:34:00] fire in my house, the one object I'm saving

Carrie Chan: to make sure that you catch it's a Vitamix.

Paul Shapiro: It's an expensive blender. okay. Thank you very much, Carrie.

Carrie Chan: Thank you all. Have a nice evening.