Inside Ivy Farm, the Oxford-based startup turning cells into steaks

On the outskirts of Oxford, U.K. sits Ivy Farm Technologies. Only, it’s not a farm quite like we know it.

Founded in 2019 as a spin out from the University of Oxford, the company produces lab-grown meat. Its headquarters house its laboratory and production facility.

Cultivated meat is made by a process of extracting cells from an animal and “feeding” it a nutrient-rich solution. These cells grow and multiply. They are then put in a bioreactor — which is a large tank — to continue to grow.

Ivy Farm is focused on beef at the moment, and CNBC’s The Edge visited the company’s lab to see the process.

The startup currently gets its cells from animals that are already being slaughtered for food. It then goes through the process of growing those cells before putting it into its bioreactor called “Betty.” This tool can make three tonnes of meat per year.

The end product is like a paste, which Ivy Farm said can be mixed with real meat or other plant proteins to create something resembling a burger or teak. One product that CNBC saw was a small steak-like item, which was made with 10% cultivated meat and 90% plant protein.

Caitlin Doran, associate scientist at Ivy Farm, explained that for now, the process requires cells to be taken from a dead animal. But that won’t happen in the future.

“In the future, we really won’t be hoping to go back to anything that’s dead,” Doran told CNBC. “Once you’ve got those cells, we don’t have need to go back to that animal anyway.”

Ivy Farm this year struck a partnership with Finnish firm Synbio Powerlabs to manufacture its cultivated meat on a larger scale. The company is hoping to launch a product in 2025.

In the U.K., regulators now allow lab-grown meat to be used in pet food, but not for human consumption. However, Singapore and the U.S. have approved some cultivated meat for human consumption.

While scaling and regulation are one challenge, Ivy Farm and its rivals will have a big job to do to get consumers on board with the idea of lab-grown meat.

“This is going to go down to educating consumers that … this is not different than real meat,” Harsh Amin, CEO of Ivy Farm, told CNBC.

Watch the video above for the full interviews and a tour of Ivy Farm Technologies.