UK Cultivated Pet Food Firm Meatly Secures Imperial College Pilot Facility

Cultivated meat company Meatly has moved into Imperial College London's advanced manufacturing hub in West London following a £10.4 million Series A round. The company targets initial production runs in 2027, marking a scaling milestone for the cultivated pet food sector.

UK cultivated meat company Meatly has moved to Grapht Works, which is Imperial College London’s pilot and advanced manufacturing site in North Acton, London. The company plans to start its first production runs there in 2027 and become fully operational next year. This relocation is funded by the £10.4 million Series A round that Meatly closed in May. This funding round added Oyster Bay Venture Capital, Clean Growth Fund and JamJar Investments as new investors alongside founding backer Agronomics. Meatly stated in May that the capital would pay for a 20,000-litre bioreactor facility in London. The company expects this to be the largest cultivated meat production site in Europe. CEO Owen Ensor confirmed in June that fit-out work on a new London pilot facility had begun. Meatly was founded in 2022 and produces cultivated chicken as an ingredient for the pet food market. UK regulators authorised the product in 2024. In 2025, it went on sale in Chick Bites, which is a dog treat developed with plant-based brand THE PACK. This milestone made Meatly the first company in Europe to sell cultivated meat. The company builds its own bioreactors and culture medium to bring production costs down. It has previously reported reducing the cost of its protein-free growth medium to £0.22 per litre, and achieved a roughly tenfold cut in bioreactor costs. Grapht Works is located within Imperial’s Old Oak Innovation Cluster, part of the university’s WestTech London initiative in west London. Imperial describes the site as London’s first dedicated facility for pilot and demonstration manufacturing. It was set up in response to demand from deep tech companies moving out of the lab and into production. The site rents flexible industrial space where science and technology businesses can develop, test and scale their manufacturing processes. Alice Sewell, Investment Director at Imperial, explained that the investment in Grapht Works was built on a belief that this is where the UK's next generation of industrial companies could be built with the right infrastructure. She noted that Meatly taking this step towards full scale production in 2027 shows that this vision is starting to be realised.

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