What Happened
Meatly, a company that makes cultivated meat for pet food, has moved to Grapht Works, Imperial College London's pilot and advanced manufacturing site in the Old Oak Innovation Cluster. Imperial announced the move on 2 November 2026. Meatly plans to start its first production runs there in 2027. Its £10.4 million Series A, closed in May, is paying for the move. At the time of that round, Meatly said the money would fund a London facility with 20,000 litres of bioreactor capacity, which it expects to be Europe's largest cultivated meat site. The 20,000-litre figure is the facility's total capacity; the announcements don't give the volume of each reactor. Meatly was founded in 2022, received UK authorisation in 2024 and started selling in 2025. The company says it builds its own bioreactors and culture medium.
Why It Matters
Shared pilot and demonstration space can let startups move from the lab to production without first paying for their own plant. Imperial calls Grapht Works London's first facility of this kind. It also hosts Solena Materials and Aed Energy, which shows university-backed infrastructure aimed at scale-up companies.
Shared pilot space can lower the cost of getting into production, but it doesn't replace proof of yield and unit cost.
FET's Takeaway
Our analysis: a food engineer starting a small production company could rent flexible industrial space and put off building costs while proving cleaning, utilities and process validation at pilot scale. There are limits. Meatly's cost figures are its own reports: £0.22 per litre for its protein-free medium and bioreactor costs cut about tenfold. The announcements give no yield or unit economics. Production in 2027 is still a plan, not a completed step.
Verification source: vegconomist ↗