November 23, 2021

By Lynda Kiernan-Stone, Global AgInvesting Media

JBS, the largest protein company in the world, has entered the cultivated protein space and has agreed to acquire Spain-based BioTech Foods. 

Along with the acquisition, the company unveiled plans to build a new plant for BioTech Foods in Spain to scale up production, along with its plans to establish Brazil’s first cultivated protein research & development center. All combined, these deals and initiatives represent a total investment of $100 million.

Although many partnerships have been forged between some of the world’s top food companies and cultivated meat and protein companies, this deal marks the first acquisition in the space by a major global food company.

In recent years, concerns associated with animal protein production have increasingly come to the fore, including antibiotic resistance, sustainability, animal welfare, food-borne illnesses, and perhaps most pressingly, the environmental impact of such production systems.

Exacerbating these concerns is the knowledge that meat consumption is projected to grow by 40-70 percent by 2050 to keep pace with population growth and global consumption shifts. And although all food production carries with it some level of carbon footprint, beef production is a stand-out offender. 

Carbon Brief, a UK-based climate change website, recently illustrated in detail to what extent, showing data indicating that the meat and dairy industries account for 7.1 gigatons, or 14.5 percent of man-made greenhouse gas emissions per year. However, beef is by far the worst, responsible for 60 kilograms of emissions for every kilogram of meat produced.

Compounding this issue is the methane factor. Due to being ruminants, cows emit high levels of methane, a gas that is 34 times more harmful than CO2, as a result of their digestion process.

For years now, the message has been broadcast from scientific and government bodies that in order to mitigate the damage being done to our environment and the worsening of climate change, meat consumption needs to be greatly reduced. 

And it would seem that JBS, as the largest meat company in the world, has seen the writing on the wall. The company has already expanded into plant-based foods through its Planterra business in the U.S., its Incrível product line in Brazil, and its acquisition of Vivera, the third-largest plant-based food company in the EU.

It has also recently expanded into fish production through the acquisition of Australia’s Huon Aquaculture – the second largest salmon producer in the country – for US$313.5 million.  

“This is a strategic acquisition, which marks the entry of JBS into the aquaculture business,” said Gilberto Tomazoni, global CEO, JBS, when announcing the acquisition in August of this year. “We will repeat what we did previously with poultry, pork, and value-added products – to make our portfolio even more complete. Aquaculture will be a new growth platform for our businesses.”

If we follow the strategic dots, an expansion into cultivated, or cell-based proteins is the next logical step.

Under the terms of the deal, JBS will become the majority stakeholder in BioTech Foods. Coming together, JBS will gain access to BioTech Foods’ technology and protein production capacity, while providing the industrial processing, marketing, and sales capacity to bring new products to market. 

“We are expanding our global platform to address the new trends in consumption and the growth of the global population,” said Tomazoni. “The acquisition of BioTech Foods and the new research center put JBS in a unique position to push ahead in the cultivated protein sector.”

Founded by Iñigo Charola, a marketing and strategy executive, and Mercedes Vila Juárez, PhD, a leading expert in materials physics, in San Sebastián, Spain in 2017, BioTech Foods has the support of the Spanish government and the EU for its work producing cultivated protein.

The company currently operates a pilot plant in San Sebastián where it is developing Ethicameat – a cell-based pork product, and is the head company in an EU-based project called Meat4All – an initiative designed to drive the scaling of cell-based meats. Through this project, the company received approximately US$3 million in grant funding toward the commercialization of its products.

BioTech Foods is also heading up another US$6 million project backed by the Spanish government exploring the potential health benefits of sustainable cell-based products.

With the completion of this new production plant in Spain funded by JBS to the tune of $41 million, BioTech Foods anticipates that it should reach commercial production in mid-2024. At that time, its cultivated protein will be reaching consumers in the form of hamburgers, steaks, sausages, and meatballs, with additional cell-based chicken, pork, and fish products in the pipeline.

On the other side of the world, JBS is also planning the launch of a cultivated protein R&D center in Brazil that is expected to break ground in 2022. The second phase of construction will include a 10,000 square-meter plant that will be headed up by Luismar Marques Porto and Fernanda Vieira Berti –  both Ph.D.s in chemical engineering

Porto was a visiting scientist at Harvard University and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), while Fernanda has been with the Research Institute I3Bs and created a startup incubated in Silicon Valley currently operating in the EU developing products for animal health based on regenerative and T-cell medicine.

These two specialists in bioengineering will head a team of 25 researchers working on the development of cutting-edge technologies for the food industry. And through its investment, JBS is looking to develop new techniques with the power to accelerate the economies of scale and the reduction of cost associated with cultivated protein production.

– Lynda Kiernan-Stone is editor with GAI Media, and is managing editor and daily contributor for Global AgInvesting’s AgInvesting Weekly News and  Agtech Intel News, as well as HighQuest Group’s Oilseed & Grain News. She can be reached at lkiernan-stone@globalaginvesting.com.