Israeli cultivated meat startup Aleph Farms has secured the green light from regulators to market its thin cut beef steaks in Singapore, and plans to launch in the first half of 2027.
The firm, which has a contract development and manufacturing partnership with Cell Agritech, plans to launch with select restaurant partners once Cell Agritech is producing commercial batches in Singapore, CEO Didier Toubia told AgFunderNews. “Initial production will be in Singapore, with [Cell Agritech’s larger facility in] Penang [in Malaysia] supporting expanded volumes as demand grows.”
He added: “Tech transfer is underway at Cell Agritech in Singapore and The Cultured Hub in Switzerland, and we expect both lines to be operational during 2027. We are in active discussions with foodservice partners in Singapore but are not in a position to name them yet.”
While Aleph Farms has been cleared to sell its steaks in Israel since 2023, it is prioritizing other markets first, said Toubia. “We chose to focus first on launching in Singapore and Switzerland, where we are building production capacity with partners and securing approvals.”
The path to profitability
According to Toubier, “The fundamental questions of cost, scalability, and product quality [in cultivated meat production] have largely been answered.”
The challenge now, he claimed, is twofold: “First, developing the right model and partnerships to move through the initial scale-up phase and reach profitability over the next two to three years. Second, shorter and clearer regulatory pathways, which would let validated products reach market faster.”
Aleph has recently laid off some team members following plans to shift production in Israel from its pilot facility to third parties, he confirmed. “This is a more capital-efficient path to scale than building and operating our own plants. The size of the team reflects that shift in structure rather than a change in our activity or ambition.”
Lower-cost path to whole cuts in 5,000-L bioreactors
Aleph has also modified its core platform enabling it to make whole cut beef steaks with fewer steps at lower cost. Rather than proliferating cells in one bioreactor and then transferring them to another one for seeding onto plant-based scaffolds, Aleph has ditched the second step.
It now triggers its cells to partially differentiate into fat and muscle in the first bioreactor by altering the media composition. It then harvests the cells and adds them to a plant protein matrix, said Toubia, who is now raising growth capital to support the next phase of scale-up.
“We have fully transitioned to this novel, streamlined process, significantly reducing both step count and production costs.”
On bioreactors, “Our approach is to rely on validated designs and sizes to reduce risk and improve scalability, rather than betting on unproven larger formats,” added CTO Neta Lavon, PhD. “Our TEA showed high margins at price parity using 5,000-liter bioreactors for mammalian cells, which are already in commercial use across bioprocessing. On that basis we do not believe we need to target a larger size at this stage.”
According to Lavon: “Two earlier steps underpin where we are today. We moved to a fully animal-component-free growth medium in 2021, addressing one of the most-cited barriers to cost, quality, and regulatory acceptance ahead of much of the field. And our independent TEA validated that profitability is achievable using non-modified, non-GMO cells with equipment available today, an approach long assumed too costly.”
Price parity with conventional beef
An independent techno-economic analysis “indicates that production can scale profitably with technology and equipment available today,” claimed Toubia. This projects a 47% gross margin at price parity with conventional beef, a unit production cost of $6.45 per pound, and a payback period in 2.5 years.
As to the basic rationale behind cultivated meat, he said: “The durable appeal is food security and supply chain resilience. Over the past five years we have seen the same pattern repeat: COVID, the war in Ukraine, escalating tariffs, and now instability in the Gulf. Each placed new restrictions on global trade through contested straits and closed borders, and each exposed the same fracture points in how food moves around the world.
“The common vulnerability is concentration, long supply chains that depend on a small number of regions and chokepoints. Cultivated foods help address this by allowing protein to be produced closer to demand and diversified across geographies, which reduces exposure to those shocks.”
Further reading:
Cultivated meat deep dive: After the crash, who’s still standing?
UPSIDE’s $50m bid may not be final word on Believer Meats plant as auction deadline shifts
