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Meatable is filing dossiers in at least six countries. “I see us moving with pretty good speed through 2025,” Tripician said in October. “At the end, I would be very disappointed in our team if we don’t have approval in five, six countries by this time or the end of next year.”

Getting regulatory approval in 5 or 6 countries this year would be a big step forward for Meatable, and the industry as a whole, especially if it was in Europe and the US, and probably a big positive for ANIC stock. Any guesses which countries? Singapore, the Netherlands, the US, Israel, China (Hong Kong)?

Moving away from VC funding to large company-partners seems intuitively the best (perhaps the only?) option to me. Their tech sounds interesting. I also like the fact that they aren't making the end product, but are selling on to companies that do, in much the same way as Onego Bio for eggs, and Solar Foods for protein bars and shakes. Metable represents about 7.5% of ANIC's NAV:

"Tripician, a US meat industry veteran who took the helm at Meatable last summer, has acknowledged that we’re not going back to 2021 when money was cheap and firms were banking on using VC money to fund large-scale commercial facilities in-house.

Speaking to us in a recent interview, he predicted that, “The companies that will win will have the best science, and they will partner with established [meat] companies to build large-scale plants.”

Meatable, he said, would be “a raw material supplier, as unsexy as that is, a raw material supplier or vendor to a meat company. Meat companies will have this be part of their capex plan for decades, most likely incremental standalone, cultivated meat plants."...

"However, Meatable’s secret sauce is its ability to understand the internal machinery within the cells that triggers them to develop into different cell types by deploying patented Opti-Ox technology developed by cofounder Dr. Mark Kotter. This activates transcription factors (combinations of which encode the identity of cells) with a precision “rarely seen in biology,” enabling Meatable to both precisely control and dramatically speed up the differentiation process, said Luining.

“We’re using cells’ natural ability to turn into muscle or fat by pressing the buttons that turn them into muscle or fat. This is really a breakthrough in stem cell biology. We went from 45 days to 21, then eight, and now four days [to differentiate pluripotent stem cells into muscle and fat cells]. Doing it this fast is ultimately what makes our cultivated meat production process economically viable.”

https://agfundernews.com/meatable-aims-to-start-construction-of-pilot-scale-cultivated-meat-facility-in-singapore-later-this-year

Two greenqueen articles on future plans at Meatable and BlueNalu:

https://www.greenqueen.com.hk/meatable-trumeat-lab-grown-pork-meat-singapore-factory/

https://www.greenqueen.com.hk/bluenalu-lab-grown-cultivated-seafood-bluefin-tuna-toro-launch/

Https://agfundernews.com/gfi-there-are-no-silver-bullets-to-fill-funding-gaps-in-cultivated-meat

During the internet bubble, Cisco stock rose before the rise in stocks like Facebook and Google. That makes perfect sense, because they needed to deploy all the routers and switches before applications could be built on top of them. More recently, we've seen a massive increase in Nvidia for the same reason. The application companies like Microsoft and Tesla and Google have been buying millions of chips to train their AI models, but they are only just rolling out their products, so none of these stocks have risen as much as NVDA because of AI.

I doubt the likes of BlueNalu and Onego Bio will commercialise their products much before 2027/8, but Liberations Labs is upstream in the value chain. We will need to build more bioreactor capacity before the proteins being generated are sold. All that to say, I think Liberation Labs will be where most of the value is initially created. Good news, given it's ANIC's largest holding.

Https://www.bluenalu.com/bluenalu-expands-partnership-with-nomad-foods-as-new-research-shows-strong-uk-consumer-demand

Nomad Foods = Birds Eye and Findus as well as other big European brands.

"They should begin operating towards the end of this year, which means they will be generating operating cash flow before the end of 2027." That should read the end of 2026.

I agree that the commercial success of the larger portfolio holdings won't become apparent, if it happens, until 2028 and beyond. When will the market begin to put a higher probability on those future cash flows and begin to discount them? Probably not until late 2026, early 2027 would be my best guess. The company which is going to move the stock in a significant way before then is Liberation Labs. I keep coming back to Mark Warner's comments in a Future of Foods interview:

Mark:"What we like to tell people is it’s not that we want to spend the capital, but the return on that incremental capital is so positive just because we can manufacture at such higher throughput and efficiency.

It makes sense.

If you’re spending a big amount of capital, it should be because you’re convinced it’s giving you better return.

Alex: So with all that expense up front, how soon do you think it’ll be before you start turning a profit and investors?

Mark: Well once we’re operating we believe it’ll be profitable in the first year. The facility itself, once it’s built, you put the front end capital in, the facility has very, very solid operating margins. And we’re quite confident in the first year we’ll be cash flow positive and profitable."

They should begin operating towards the end of this year, which means they will be generating operating cash flow before the end of 2027. That is remarkably fast and if true will mean they will begin generating the capital they need internally for the buildout of their future plants, or if they want to move quickly, that they will have no problem raising the external capital to do so. That is absoultely not being priced into the shares right now. Theoretically, we are trading for less than a sum-of-the-parts if Agronomics could find buyers for their stakes and not on the basis of even Liberation Lab's future cash flows discounted to the present.

Interview with Onego Bio's Chief Business Development Officer: https://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/Article/2025/04/22/onego-bios-bioidentical-egg-white-protein-could-ease-supply-strain-from-avian-flu/

It was good to hear Jim Mellon sound so bullish on the stock price, as he obviously has more insight into progress at each of the portfolio companies than we (or the market) do. He also talked about Philip Boigner in glowing terms. Given the new Shellbay CEO's background at the Dubai Silicon Oasis Authority, I wouldn't be surprised if he was instrumental in brokering the deal between Liberation Labs and the NEOM Investment Fund.

I'm not following. All I was suggesting is that the dicrepancy may be because ANIC's stake would go from 25% to 16% if you account for all the shares of Onego Bio that could be issued from options and convertibles.

It's 16% on a fully diluted basis. Perhaps he was talking on an undiluted basis, or that he just got it wrong.

Here's an article with more detail on the deal, with comments by Mark Warner: https://agfundernews.com/liberation-labs-heads-to-saudi-arabia-as-neom-investment-fund-ventures-into-biomanufacturing

I'm excited about the prospects for all those companies, but the success of Liberation Labs, our largest investment, is what could really move the share price meaningfully higher. My biggest worry is how all these companies will raise enough capital to scale, because that's what's needed to bring costs low enough to compete. Who will provide that capital?

NEOM investment fund participated in Liberation Labs convertible bond in January and there was talk at the time about LL looking into the prospects for a new manufacturing facility in Saudi Arabia. Yesterday's press release confirmed this and underscored NIF's backing of Liberation Labs. The NEOM Investment Fund (NIF) is primarily funded by the Public Investment Fund (PIF), Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, so in essence we have one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world backstopping our largest investment. For me, that doesn't just derisk Liberation Labs, it pretty much derisks Agronomics. Liberation Labs now just needs to execute.

The factory in Saudi Arabia will be number two. They plan to build production facilities in 2 phases, with phase 1 being for bioreactors in the US, the Middle East and Australia, and phase 2 being East Asia, Europe and Brazil. They could also get a $100m grant from the US Department of Defense, I believe as an add-on to the existing site in Richmond. This article goes into more detail: https://www.greenqueen.com.hk/liberation-labs-precision-fermentation-facility-saudi-arabia-funding/

If manufacturing is going to fundamentally change, to reshore, become more local and less dependent on complex global supply chains, ANIC's companies will benefit greatly. However, before that can happen they will need to scale production, and that will require a lot of new capital. It's very difficult to know what the outcome of Trump's tariff ploy will be. It seems to me he's playing chicken and it's not clear to me whether China (or the EU) will comply or call his bluff. If tensions continue to escalate, I worry about whether access to capital, especially for start-ups in nascent industries like ag tech, will become difficult and/or even more expensive to raise. I'm so glad Liberation Labs got their $50.5M deal done in January, before all this kicked off.

You never know, but I'd be surprised if the US were to go as far as banning protein made using precision fermentation. They clearly aren't going to ban the production of wine and beer and although there's another step in precision fermentation, where a genetic modification is made to the micro-organism that's used, but they are unlikely to ban Crispr cas9 and I they haven't banned GMOs, despite the hullabaloo that happened a few years back. This is also a new industry that will create jobs in America, mostly in States that voted Republican. Trump is all about regenerating manufacturing in America and penalising outsourcing. Food made by precision fermentation is made locally, it's not imported.

Solar Foods aims to be producing Solein at $4.60-$5.50/kg when it completes Factory 2. I asked Grok for an estimate of the wholesale cost of producing whey isolate and got the following response: "Putting this together, a rough estimate for the wholesale production cost of WPI in 2025 might range from $15–$20/kg USD at the factory gate."

https://agfundernews.com/gas-fermentation-startup-solar-foods-bags-10-6m-grant-to-enter-pre-engineering-phase-of-commercial-scale-plant

He expects to reach price parity within the next 12 months, but they will continue to cut costs in the 2-3 years after that, reaching £1 per kg or lower. My conviction about my investment in ANIC almost always strengthens whenever I learn more about the portfolio companies. I urge everyone to take the time to listen to this fantastic interview with Helder Cruz. Here are my notes:

"How were you able to get it so cheap?

Not competing with low-end £1 per kg. Competing with premium pet food £10 per kg. Cost has been a top priority from the beginning, without compromising on quality or safety.

Secret to lowering cost?

Cultured medium in animal cell tech is rich and expensive. Several hundred £ per litre. In two and a half years they reduced costs 3000x. How? 50 components, some very expensive. Replaced 5-7 very expensive compounds. Into more affordable food-safe compounds. Not easy. Replaced different functions that expensive compounds had. From £700 to 22p per litre. Didn't even start to exploit economies of scale. When move from kilograms to tonnes, they will generate another 20X reduction. End with 1.0p-1.5p per litre. This is the biggest cost issue and he thinks they've solved it. Unique for animal cells. Helger Cruz has never seen anything this cheap in his 30-year experience. He thinks they are leading the industry. Facility depreciation is the other major cost pillar. Developing their own in-house bioreactor at a fraction of the cost of a biopharma bioreactor (200-300 litre = £250k). Prototype is already a pilot , so 200-250 litre capacity. Aim is to build a bioreactor 10X-20X cheaper than biopharma. All this will mean they hope can price parity in 12 months, and they won't stop there, 2 or 3 years more they can go as low as £1 per kg or lower. Talking here about opex, so there will be room for depreciation and SG&A.

When does he expect to be profitable?

When they build the 20,000-litre bioreactor, they'll have a full production line. With one production line he thinks they will be profitable. Expects them to reach £1 per litre (some of their studies suggest 70p). Within the next 5 years. Just a question of time, doesn't depend on the technology.

About product:

Producing chicken biomass. Amino acid profile is very similar to profile of chicken breast. By choosing pet foods, don't need to differentiate into muscle tissue. Hybrid product, majority of product coming from plants, 20%-30% from cultivated meat.

Scaling. Animal cells more fragile than yeast or bacteria (precision fermentation) so more challenging.

Will build a pilot facility later this year. Will go industrial in the next 2-3 years (1 tonne per day of productions).

Funding for the industry is difficult, but he feels their position as lowest cost provider means it should be less difficult.

Big challenges going forward?

Scaling to very high volumes 20,000 litres. Continue reducing costs (he's confident about this). Feels their estimates are actually

Stocks that go on monster runs often ride up the Upper Bollinger Band. On the weekly chart, ANIC has been doing this for the last 4 weeks. This week began with price outside the Upper Band which is currently at 7p, so I agree that this looks like a healthy pullback, at least so far and I expect that 7p level will be tested. On the monthly chart the Upper Bolling Band sits at 12.02p. If the long downtrend, which began when we peaked in May 2021 is over, then I think price should at a minimum hit 12.02p and then hopefully begin to ride the Upper Band upwards as it did from December 2020 to May 2021.