London-based cultivated meat startup Meatly has secured £10.4 million in Series A funding to construct Europe’s largest cultivated meat production facility, featuring a 20,000-litre bioreactor. The round was led by Oyster Bay Venture Capital, Clean Growth Fund, and JamJar Investments, bringing total funding to £17.4 million. Founded in 2022 by Owen Ensor and Dr Helder Cruz, Meatly produces real chicken meat from animal cells without slaughter. The company made history by selling the world’s first cultivated meat pet product in 2025 after receiving UK regulatory approval. Commercial products targeting the pet food market are scheduled to launch in 2027.
In-Depth:
- London-based Meatly has closed a £10.4m Series A funding to build a 20,000-litre bioreactor facility, which will be the largest cultivated meat production site in Europe.
- The round was led by three new institutional investors: Oyster Bay Venture Capital, Clean Growth Fund, and JamJar Investments, joining founding backers Agronomics and Pets at Home, bringing total funding to £17.4m.
- Meatly is starting with the pet food market and sold the world’s first cultivated meat pet product in 2025 after obtainting UK regulatory approval.
Meatly, based in London, raised £10.4 million in Series A funding from Oyster Bay Venture Capital, Clean Growth Fund, and JamJar Investments to build Europe’s largest cultivated meat production facility, with commercial products set to launch in 2027.
Founded in 2022 by Owen Ensor and Dr Helder Cruz, Meatly builds real chicken meat from animal cells without the necessary for slaughter. The process happens in large steel bioreactors, where cells grow in a nutrient solution and multiply into meat. Meatly currently supplies its chicken to UK retailers for pet food.
The cultivated meat industest has attracted significant global investment but still struggles to commercialise. Most companies are focutilized on research and development. High production costs, especially for cell culture media and bioreactors, are the main barriers to scaling up. Meatly has spent four years working on these problems.
“Meatly has one focus – to build commercially viable cultivated meat a reality. Over the last four years, Meatly’s pioneering team has systematically focutilized on reducing key costs and building the strongest possible technical foundation for growth. Now we have our own industest-leading technology, and we are ready to scale,” states Ensor.
Meatly’s progress is backed by data. By 2024, the company had reduced the cost of its chemically defined, protein-free culture medium to £0.22 per litre. In 2025, it reduced bioreactor costs by about 10x by manufacturing equipment in-houtilize.
The focus on cost control and vertical integration sets Meatly apart from competitors like Upside Foods and Eat Just, which face regulatory and cost hurdles in the US, and from European companies that are still at the lab stage.
“Meatly is not just building a new product – it’s laying the foundations for an entirely new protein category. Cultivated meat is emerging as one of the most sustainable and ethical ways to produce meat today. From advancing the science to early retail sales for pets, Meatly has revealn a clear ability to relocate from concept to real-world application, with the foundations to scale across Europe and globally,” states Elise Schumacher, investor at Oyster Bay Venture Capital.
The capital will go directly into building the London facility, enabling Meatly to continuously produce cultivated chicken at scale for the UK pet food market.
