Joes Future Food Tech Secures More Funding for Cultivated Pork in China

China-based Joes Future Food Technology Co., Ltd. says it has secured “tens of millions” of Yuan (RMB) in a Series A+ funding round exclusively funded by Qiming Venture Partners.

Joes fresh funding round will help the tech company establish a pilot plant that can produce cultured meat on a thousand-liter scale, aimed at developing market-competitive cultured meat products. By 2025, Joes says it will help to reshape the landscape of protein supply.

Funding a sustainable future

The company raised $10.9 million in a Series A funding round in 2021, which followed a $3 million raise in earlier that year.

Joes Future Food became the first China-based company to create cultivated meat in the country. The company is involved in scientific research, industrialization, and regulatory policy exploration, harnessing the capabilities and resources of a comprehensive industry chain.

Since its launch in 2019, the company has led the domestic cultivated meat industry into the pilot production phase, employing 100-liter bioreactors, and has become the leader in cultivated meat production in China.

China’s “14th Five-Year Plan for National Agricultural and Rural Science and Technology Development” highlighted future food manufacturing, including the development of cultivated meat, and the high-value utilization of agricultural product resources and the development of new food resources.

Cultivated meat production in China

Last June, Joes unveiled the first cultivated pork belly; China is the world’s largest consumer of conventional pork.

China is seeing an uptick in cultivated meat production. Shanghai-based CellX debuted the country’s first cultivated meat factory in February. Last year, it raised more than $10 million in a Series A funding round, bringing its total funding to more than $15 million. It’s also working on cultivated pork as well as beef and chicken.

In March, Jimi Biotech debuted China’s first cultivated chicken. The company says it is working to develop “new forms” of meat while reducing public health risks and addressing food safety, the environment, and other problems related to conventional meat production.

In January, Chinese and U.S. regulators met to discuss the regulatory approval processes for cultivated meat. China says it is turning its focus to safety assessments of cultivated meat, with announcements expected this year. Yan Song, director of Division III Risk Assessment at China’s National Center for Food Safety Risk Assessment said in a statement that the center’s 2023 plans include setting up expert working groups to “ensure innovation, industry development, and food safety move forward together.”