Innovate UK Global Incubator Programme - Gateway to Asia Showcase 2023
Okay, welcome everyone. This is the Technology Showcase of the Global Incubator Programme Gateway to Asia. To Her Excellency Kara Owen, British High Commissioner to Singapore, ladies and gentlemen, and all of you tuning in, welcome and thank you for joining us tonight. Asia's agriculture and food sector is, diverse, fragmented, nuanced, and some might say complex. As an ecosystem capitalist that's anchored here by Enterprise Singapore, we recognise the need to harness local brilliance to drive increased productivity and resilience in our sector. We also appreciate that not all gaps will be addressed locally.
We need to collaborate with our neighbours both regionally and internationally. So through GROW's Land and Launch platform, we are actively building corridors of collaboration with key agrifood ecosystems worldwide. These act as fast tracks for founders to interact with markets in Asia and thus internationalise.
What this also does is allows you to tap into overseas brilliance, adapt technology into what you're doing here to drive positive outcomes to what you're doing here in the region. One of the first few corridors of collaboration that we have established is with the UK. And this has been made possible by the ambition of Innovate UK and Innovate UK Edge, who are key nodes in the ecosystem, providing invaluable support to help scale innovative UK ventures into unicorn status. The British High Commissioner and her team here in Singapore have been extremely supportive in this programme. Tonight, we jointly extend a warm hospitality to all of you, hosting you as we showcase frontier technologies from the UK. On that note, I would like to invite Her Excellency Kara Owen, British High Commissioner of Singapore to deliver the opening address.
Good evening everybody. I really like coming onto a bit of music that makes me feel a bit rockstar. Really pleased with that. So, thank you very much Joshua for the introduction and thank you so much for inviting me to be part of this opening this evening. I'm really lucky that I have a very varied job, where I'm working on all kinds of issues throughout a working week, but if there ever there was a subject that reminded you how important the work that we are doing is, it's food.
So I wanted to talk to you a little bit about motivation for why it's so important that innovative technologies don't just stay in the lab but actually make it into the marketplace. I wanted to talk to you a little bit about why food and agritech, uh, is such an important part of the UK Singapore partnership and why I think as two countries, um, we can contribute to changing the world. And then I wanted to say a few thank yous.
I also want to talk with a bit of pride and passion about the UK companies that are exhibiting through this programme because I've just spent a bit of time with them and they have really blown my mind. So in terms of motivation, if you're looking for a definition of food security, it's that all people everywhere at all times have enough food to be able to lead healthy lives. And if you're looking for the purpose of this, the ultimate purpose of this, that is what these collaborations are all designed to bring about. And it's really important that we use innovation to achieve that goal because things are not all going well in food production.
And there's a whole heap of reasons for that. We already know the statistics, you all know them, but that a third of the food that is produced never ever makes it to consumption. And that all goes to waste. By 2050 we'll need to be producing 60% more foods than we already are producing. And at the same time, the places that food is being produced and the systems that are being used are being hit by all kinds of things like climate change, conflict, that are making it more and more difficult to produce food in the way that we have done before. And the outcome of all of this is that a billion people don't have enough to eat within 92 countries. And that if we don't get a grip of making sure that we're maximising our food production, that this won't be a poor country only problem.
This is going to be a problem for every country around the world. So if you're looking for a kind of motivating factor, and why you might go into a particular sector, I think they're all there, for food on the UK and Singapore partnership. It's a really fantastic relationship that we've got and the relationship that we have with triangular relationship where we've got a partnership between Innovate UK, uh, working with GROW and you've been our partners for a few years. Yeah, and it's an absolute privilege and a pleasure to be working with both of you and with the backing and support of Enterprise Singapore and supported by my lovely team inside the British High Commission, both on the commercial side and also on the science and the innovation side.
It's a really fantastic partnership because the UK and Singapore work on big problems together and they have big ideas and they have big ambitions. They both have fabulous innovation systems, they've got great ecosystems for startups. They think hard about investment. And we are also countries that have very, very respected policymaking and regulators, that are responsive, responsive to changes out there in the real world and that like to think of how they are going to enable and not hamstring companies who are developing innovative products. When I was talking to the UK companies that I met before, and I hope you take a moment to speak to all of them, they've all got really powerful stories, really super projects, products, that have great applicability in this part of the world. I was finding very strong messages around purpose, around technology, really unique technologies that they've developed about real seriousness and having road tested what they're doing, talent that they're attracting into their companies and all of them by very definition of the fact of them being here. But I think it isn't just about Singapore. They have the within their own DNA,
whatever DNA they're working with in their daily basis around food, in their own DNA, they've got a very, very international outlook, in terms of partnerships for in further innovation, in terms of customers and in terms of looking for investment. It's very, very easy to be proud of what they've they done. Really fabulous. There's also a huge amount of UK government support that has gone into the sector as well. We've got a 270 million pound farming innovation programme and we've got 120 million pounds going into field research, as well. And that is reflected also in, has made a really big statement of intent around it's 30 by 30.
I love it cuz it's one of those things that you think, wow, that's a brilliant goal, but how on earth are you gonna reach it? And it's those kinds, very ambitious goals in the same way that we have on reducing, carbon emissions that is going to unleash the kind of integration that we want to unleash. So it's a fantastic sector. These companies are really excellent. If you've come to look at UK companies who are here in Singapore, they're here not just for Singapore but also for the broader region. And you should know that they are very well supported by both the UK government and by Singapore government as well. So thank you again to you Joshua, and to GROW and all of the partnership that you've given us. Thank you to Innovate UK for your long-term commitment to innovating with Singapore. I know that you,
having worked here has only encouraged you to work more with Singapore and I know why: it's because you're getting results that you were able to tell me about. So thank you to my team, thank you to the companies we've got, all the work that you have done to develop the brilliant products and being willing to get on a plane to come to this really fabulous country and showcase what you are doing and I wish all of you the very, very best of luck. Thank you. Thank you High Commissioner. So the Global Incubator Programme Gateway to Asia is part of a broader initiative by Innovate UK to internationalise UK agritech. Two years in,
GROW has been appointed as the delivery partner to deliver a six month programme to help founders adapt their solutions to first land in Singapore and then launch into neighbouring Asia. Why Asia? Well, we know the future of food is in Asia. Population wise, this region is the, the fastest growing. 65% of middle class will reside in Asia Pacific and this will transition Asia from being a global manufacturing centre into a global consumption powerhouse with food spending set to double to 8 trillion by 2013. But Asia by herself is not poised to address this tremendous growth. East and South Asia, for example, are susceptible to extreme weather changes, crop outputs on the decline, and with unsustainable farming and fishing practices, as well as inefficient value chains. So the UN has estimated that
with business as usual, biodiversity losses could wipe out 63% of combined GDP across APAC to answer and address to some of these patterns that we're seeing. We have put together a cohort which we're presenting to you tonight, the cohort of eight companies, which has been, which have been curated together with Innovate UK and Innovate UK Edge, who are building a pipeline of innovators and providing support from idea through to commercialisation. To share more about what they're doing, I'd like to invite Ian Holmes , Senior Innovation and Growth Specialist to the stage.
Thank you Josh. Good evening Your Excellency, and welcome to you all. Innovate UK is a key delivery body in the government's innovation strategy and the UK's innovation agency Innovate UK Edge works on the ground to provide valuable support to innovate their businesses in all sectors, technologies and UK regions. Edge also works with partners across the globe to help our clients with their international activities and build their partnerships and access markets in a range of territories and technology areas. In Singapore, we have now worked with GROW and other organisations to deliver three incubator programmes, two in AgriFood, one in advanced manufacturing and global business innovation programmes, visits around space technology, advanced manufacturing, AgriFood, and bringing out one on net zero. The eight companies presenting tonight are a great example of the range of up and coming AgTech and a food companies currently growing in the uk and you'll find them fascinating. And we're planning to do this all again, recruiting a cohort of eight new incubator companies over the summer and along with another 15 UK companies will be recruiting will be coming out to Singapore in October for the agrifoodtech conference.
It's a pleasure to be working with and also to witness the progress and the success of this cohort. Now I'll now hand you over to Rebecca who introduce you to the cohort. Good Evening everybody. My name Rebecca and I'm Head of accelerators at GROW.
And I'm Sin Hang, Programme Associate at GROW. It has been our true pleasure to work with these extraordinary founders on a programme that has essentially served as their boarding pass to doing business here in Asia. They have spent the last six months validating their business and value propositions, and developed their own individual strategies so that they can expand to new markets on this side of the world. This showcase is a celebration for all that they have achieved, but this showcase is also your boarding class. For those of you in the audience, we have curated a business class ticket experience so that you may engage, discuss with the founders the value they are bringing to businesses and consumers on this side of the world. We hope that you're as excited about their solutions as we are.
Tonight you will hear from eight startups across five different categories. Collectively, they have raised more than 80 million USD in funding and created more than 400 jobs in this all important sector. Before we introduce them, we acknowledge that it takes a village to make sure that wonderful startups have all the wonderful support that they need to scale. So at this point I would like to thank all of our workshop leaders, our expert coaches and our mentors, some of whom are in the room. So thank you very much for joining alongside our teams.
All of you have been invited here as we believe that each of you have a role to play in the adoption of these technologies. Each founder will just have three minutes to pitch their solutions to you and afterwards there'll be a QR code flash on the screen. This is also the same QR code on your boarding passes. As tonight is all about making connections and building collaborations, we highly encourage you to scan the QR code, especially if you're interested in these technologies. At the end of the pitches, we invite all of you to proceed just right outside the hall to connect and network personally with our founders.
We truly hope that tonight will spark some meaningful conversations about how we collectively can advance impactful technologies within our agrifood system. We've increased adoption of these cutting edge technologies like the ones you'll be hearing from today. We believe there are tremendous opportunities to realise a more productive and resilient food future in Asia. So without further ado, I would like to introduce our first startup presenting to you this evening. Making waves in the circular economy, this first startup is transforming fish waste into industrial lubricants, bringing a whole new meaning to the term fish oils.
Please join me in welcoming Idriss Elkettani from Impact Solutions. Thank you Rebecca. I'm Idriss from Impact Solutions. I'm here to showcase Olatek.
Olatek is a new method for enabling this multi circular economy within the efficient industry as Her Excellency mentioned earlier, 30% of all fish doesn't make it onto our plates. And as the result of a lot of inefficiencies across the supply chain, whether that's the result of bycatch illnesses and disease or the fish not being the right size or weight, this leads to, this leads to a lot more waste ending up into our oceans because there's no other way of disposing of it. This waste leads to medicines accumulated in fragile ecosystems, an increase in food sources of algae, which displaces the amount of nutrients available for other species. What we're proposing is a new way to create value from that fish waste, which will incentivize both traditional farmers as well as people developing new farming methods to use to to limit their environmental impact of fish consumption. We do this by combining mechanical and bio enzymatic, um, processes to extract and convert the fish waste into valuable products.
We're starting off with lubricants for the food & beverage industry, but we're interested in looking at other end users. Feel free to ask me more about this at the end of the presentation. This is what our product development timeline looks like at the moment.
Last year we were able to validate our process against some Scottish based feedstock, so salmon and trout. And this year we're looking to extend that to fishes found in Southeast Asia. We're also looking at other end users such as fisher nets, feed fermentation processes and lubricants and other applications.
Next year we've got a proof of concept coming up in Malaysia where we aim to be part of the first RAS fishery, which is a closed loop fishing system that will send no waste back to the ocean. We're also raising seed funding this year to allow us to continue to validate the technology and see if we can extend it to other feedstocks such as other animals. Thank you very much for your attention and your time as well. Thank you. It is forecasted that we need an additional 5 million tonnes annually despite reduction in arable land.
Rice is a big deal here in Asia and if you can crack how we harvest and process rice, you can become a bigger deal. Next are two hardware startups that are shaking things up in the rice industry already transforming the rice fields of the Philippines and other countries in Asia with their state-of-the-art equipment. Welcome, Craig Jamieson of straw innovations followed by Alec Anderson of Koolmill to the stage. Let's give them a round of applause. Rice, it's so foundational to our lives here in Asia, isn't it? And yet it holds a very, very dark secret. You may be aware that rice emissions are as bad as the entire aviation industry globally just from that one crop.
Why is it so bad? Well, for the last 10 years I've been based in the Philippines leading international research teams into this and in the next three minutes I'm gonna try to explain to you a bit more about that and what my company Straw Innovations is doing to answer that challenge. So let's go. The problem is that the stems and leaves of the rice plant are usually left in the field. There's about 750 million tonnes of it produced in Asia each year. What do we do with it? Tragically farmers are usually illegally burning it or just leaving it to rot and releasing methane emissions from the fields. You might say to me, well Craig, why don't we just harvest it and use it for better things? Well that is a good idea, but unfortunately the technologies haven't been developed to get it out of flooded rice fields like that. They just don't work with existing technologies. So that's the depressing bit. In 2016,
I started Straw Innovations to develop practical solutions out of that scientific research to help address that problem. My team have developed a suite of technologies that integrate into rice combine harvesters that enable them to extract the straw collected at the same time. And yes, they work even in flooded rice fields. The differences start when you look at the field on the right hand side is one that my team have harvested with our technology. It leaves a much lower stubble, but farmers love because it enables them to plow the soil straight away and get started on their next crop. The climate impact is equally stark just by saving that straw from the field.
We reduce the methane emissions from rice by 50%. We also have some technologies that can use it for clean energy and other things that also further save emissions. And as a result of these climate benefits, we have been elected by investors onto last year's Diamond List as one of the top 60 climate startups worldwide. If you are in the rice industry, I'd particularly love to speak to you at my booth afterwards and discuss how we can help you to slash your greenhouse gas emissions and perhaps even market your produce, as such and get accreditation to increase your retail value.
We've already started with our beachhead market in the Philippines, a company called SL Agritech who are the Philippines' largest hybrid rice company and they have thousands of hectares that need to be harvested. We are spreading our technologies also from the Philippines into Indonesia and perhaps with your help right across Asia. So please, why don't you join us and let's make stubble burning history. Rice at 550 billion is the largest cash crop, but for many it's an antiquated and wasteful industry. You might be wondering why I've come from Scotland to talk to you about rice.
Well, I do have 30 years experience working with the rices in four continents and perhaps you didn't know, the first rice milling machines were made in Scotland mechanised in the 1860s. These machines are destructive and they are expensive to operate and for roughly half the price of, uh, diesel to run the machine, we can supply a modern high performance milling solution, uh, for all mills, which will rapidly improve profitability. The stats for rice globally are pretty shocking. Enough rice gets lost each year that could feed 600 million people.
The triple bottom line cost of that loss is 127 billion dollars and a lot of that loss comes from very small mills who are excluded currently from accessing modern high performance milling solutions. And this is a typical small mill. Now, if we replace the machinery inside the red box with a Koolmill machine, we would increase the revenue for that mill by 35 percent. Koolmill is a partnership in technology. All the current machinery does something
mechanically to the rice. We work gently with the rice, which is why uniquely our technology can be scaled down. So without loss of performance. So that means it's applicable to all millers of other size and location. And we operate a Machine As A Service business model. And that means that the success and affordability for all millers and, and it improves the profit, improves their profitability and offers a cost certainty.
But for us, it it's recurring monthly income and it's a growing asset piece and whole millers can now benefit from the service model by increasing the profits and we and benefit by capturing the fair share of the value that we're creating. So why Asia? Well 90% of rice of course is grown here in Asia, so it's a logical place to be. We use much less power, about 90%. We deliver more food from the same inputs and we do a higher quality, which means higher value and we have 70% of all rice production covered by patents and rice in Asia is our primary business.
However we can mill many other products. Our vision is to transform rice production and make it more sustainable. Our mission is to create value for all stakeholders in the rice value chain and to grow our profitable global business. We have customers ready to take machines and we are seeking the capital to populate our initial user base. So if you're, uh, interested and share our passion to transform a global business that will help to feed 6 billion people, by 2050, we'd love to have a chat.
Thank you for and remember always be nice to rice. Thank you. Our next two companies are paving the way to the future of vertical farming and controlled environment agriculture with trailblazing technologies that unlock and augment the successes of these innovations. Intelligent Growth Solutions is unlocking new efficiencies for controlled environment agriculture. Fotenix is providing real time crop diagnostics.
Collectively, these two companies could bring forward a food secure future while improving plant health and nutrition like never before. We're so excited to see what they have in store for us. Let's hear from Caroline Craggs of Intelligent Growth Solutions followed by Dr. Charles Veys of Fotenix. Thank you for joining us this evening. I'm Caroline Craggs and I'm delighted to share a bit about IGS and how our vertical farm technology can dress the challenges facing growers globally.
One of the fundamental reasons we need vertical farming is to grow more food over the next 30 years than we have over the last 10,000. There are multiple reasons for growing vertically, such as reducing food waste, reducing water consumption, and improving food security especially in high density cities like Singapore. IGS was founded 10 years ago by a farmer and an engineer with a mission to develop the solution for making vertical farming commercially viable. They soon realised the solution must have the flexibility for a diverse range of crops and be automated and scalable, Our technology meets these objectives and the fact that our investors are some of the biggest in agritech is testament to this. We've solved major vertical farming challenges. Firstly, IGS patented three-phase power control platform that delivers only the light the plants need when they need it.
This process of photo optimization delivers energy efficiencies, making our technology 40% more efficient. Secondly, our patented tower automation platform minimises human involvement. The IOT managed system utilises cloud-based software to provide all scheduling, monitoring and cloud cultivation. And thirdly, IGS takes controlled environment agriculture a step further with total controlled environment agriculture giving growers the ability to grow high quality crops consistently, predictably all year round and up to 50% faster than in traditional methods. Managing a vertical farm on an industrial scale must be streamlined and commercially sustainable as possible to meet customers and regulators ever-changing requirements. IGS's software suite consists of three pillars.
Our growth tower management system monitors and controls the growing environment the cultivation management system manages pre- and post- cultivation. Both of these platforms integrate with our customers chosen ERP system. Our towers are IOT enabled, remote 24/7, 365 days in monitoring and control of all systems regardless of scale through cloud-based software. IGS's global research partners like James Hutton Institute are key to developing our product offering and we're continuously researching novel crops in collaboration with farmers and industry. For example,
many countries import starter and nursery plants which carry contamination risks as well as a significant amount of waste and emissions from transportation. IGS technology has the potential to improve supply chain with consistency of beyond organic locally grown crops, either seed to harvest or for propagation. We're building a global research network that some of the world's leading crop research institutes including in this region to address the specific challenges faced. I should point out that we are not commercial growers. We supply technology to farmers and operators early on. IGS made a pledge to only grow for research purposes and it's this clear business model which has led to our continued growth and success.
Igs has identified several use cases where our technology can add significant value and a variety of advantages such as high yields, consistent quality, reduced emissions, and efficient use of resources as well as full traceability. So if you are interested in growing your business with IGS or connecting with us on research or indeed if you're an impact investor, please get in touch with me and might do after this and come join me for a virtual tour. Good evening Singapore. My name is Charles Veys and I'm a specialist in agricultural diagnostics. What does that mean? Will I like taking pictures of plants.
And over the past 10 years, I've turned that interest into a commercial platform to be able to push forward the productivity of our food system. Today I show you Fotenix, the metaverse of agriculture. And our agriculture's not a stranger to innovation. The green revolution and new plant varieties has fed this, fed this population and growing population for some time, but there's only so long can we rely on that alone and the cost of and losses including in our food system or it's an all time high and we can no longer just throw labour at the problem.
The sector is crying out for tools and techniques to be able to react in its dynamic market and changing climate conditions. Automation has been a technique which has been used in the sector to try and reduce its reliance on labour. Spray booms like the one behind me shown in a major European lettuce producer are becoming more common, producers are able to react more dynamically to changes, pests, and diseases. At Fotenix we look to use as existing infrastructure and mount our low cost, low profile hardware and small cameras just like the ones on camera phone with LEDs, LEDs across the visible end of the spectrum and beyond.
What this allows us to do is create a data acquisition that we uploaded, which is when the fun starts. We were able to reconstruct virtual versions of each individual plant, which allows us to interrogate and build machine learning models for particular pest disease, even flavour profiles. Now what we're doing here is turning the plant into an asset and enabling farmers to become asset managers, making decisions of what to do on farm based on market prices and the resources they have available. But we think bigger than individual plants, we look over entire farms, we can create maps, hotspots and say where and most importantly, when something happens to inform treatment and also to help support future practises. Now my favourite part is we can then rewind that data,
we can look when that disease or when that pest initially occurred and retrain the system each time, cutting off more and more time protection going from days to weeks to months. Most importantly, improving the bottom line of agriculture and reducing reliance on a dwindling list of active chemicals. I've only scratched the surface of what is possible here. We're becoming the metaverse of agriculture with the increasing availability of cloud partners and connectivity of sites, the opportunities really are endless And there is a reason why the two biggest seed breeders on the globe use this to accelerate every platform.
We're here today looking for partners across breeding controlled environment production and farm suppliers. Those that can use this capability of diagnostics and help catalyse our food system because this level of collaboration is key if we're going to hit very optimistic targets that are difficult but attainable like 30 by 30. So I ask you if you know or part of the institution is able to benefit from this or are interested in funding the translation disruptive technology into this region. And please get in touch and find us at our booth. Thank you. As the first country in the world to approve the sale of lab-grown meat, Singapore serves as a country of choice for many cultivated meat companies to further research and development and explore partnerships to build this dream of clean cruelty-free meat to our plates.
I'd like to introduce Artun Sukan from Higher Steaks, whose cultivated meat technology has produced many of the world's first lab-grown meats. Good evening, I'm Artun Sukan from Higher Steaks, and we're making delicious cultivated pork. Meat is a growing problem.
Despite the huge challenges around the world, climate change, diseases, droughts, the majority of the population still continues to eat meat, and can't replace it. By the looks of it they'll continue to eat meat. But why is that? What turns out replacing meat is really difficult and majority of the meat alternatives out there are not really satisfying people. They are not enjoying it. So we asked people, well what do you want? Turns out they want these four things. They want to be able to afford their meat. So cost is really important.
They want their meat to be available, safe and really high quality. Far more importantly, they want it to be tasty and nutritious. Well at Higher Steaks that's exactly what we're trying to do. We harnessed the building blocks of life to create delicious cultivated meats without use of genetic engineering. By using our patent
pending technologies and trade secrets, we managed to create the world's first cultivated pork belly and bacon. Well we've been quite busy in last 12 months, by eating lots of pork belly of course, but also we've doubled our team count, um, to 57. We've also managed to build a world-class facility in Cambridge, UK that's housing our team, our pilot plant facility and our food and nutrition labs. And now we would like to bring that delicious cultivated pork to Singapore, but we cannot really do this alone. So we're looking for partners, we're looking for restaurants, chefs and manufacturers, distributors, people who are really passionate about food and would like to bring the future to their kitchen. So if you know anyone or you like to get involved, come find me after this. Let's talk about pork. Thank you very much.
Our last two technology companies bring new capability to biomanufacturing by developing novel processes that can target existing gaps at scale while bringing down the overall cost and increasing accessibility of biomanufacturing. Please welcome Mohamed El Hajj of Bright Biotech followed by Dr. Monica Tomecka of uFraction8 to conclude our evening. Good evening everyone. It is an exciting time because as Prime Minister Winston Churchill once predicted, we are on the brink of a new era of food production. More specifically, meat cultivation is the new wave of the future and it's already happening here in Singapore and across laboratories in the world.
At Bright Biotech we have a cutting edge technology that makes proteins at large quantities and plants and this is called molecular farming and it was recently identified as the newest trend amongst foodtech investors and we are very proud to be at the forefront of this sector. Compared to other technologies, molecular farming is highly scalable, sustainable, and has a light CapEx and low operation costs. Nevertheless, a few challenges remain including low protein yields and concerns about the escape of the foreign gene into the environment. At Bright Biotech we solve these issues and we've done that by using a plant organelle called chloroplasts to make the proteins in plant leaves. Our
system provides high protein yields and provides natural gene containment. We yield 2 to 10 grammes per kilogramme of fresh leaves and we're looking at side streams and byproducts to achieve circular economy. We believe our technology provides a solution for the cultivated meat sector. Today there are more more than one 70 companies racing to bring cultivated meat to our dinner plates. And since 2016,
more than 2.8 billion was invested in the sector with investments tripling every year, many challenges exist and amongst the biggest challenges is the availability and the cost of proteins that the industry requires to keep growing the plants and to keep growing the cells and sustaining them. These proteins cost several million dollars in gramme meaning they are more expensive than diamonds. At Bright Biotech, we don't only provide these proteins at low cost, but also in large quantities ensuring a smooth transition of the industry from pilot scale to industrial scale. Recently we raised 3.2 million US dollars in an oversubscribed seed round
and our immediate goals are to expand our product portfolio, build the customer base increase our manufacturing capacity and establish a global distribution network. At Bright Biotech, we're a highly skilled consortium of academic and industrial experts with a combined 80 years of experience working on protein expression and purification from genetically modified organisms and cell culture. And with the addition of new team members we're set for continued growth. I'm here today to speak with stakeholders in the cultivated meat and the alternative protein sector. So please, I'm Mohammed from Bright Biotech,
come speak with me at the biotech booth. Thank you very much. Hi, I'm Dr. Monica Tomecka, founder and director of uFraction8. After finishing my PhD at A*STAR here in Singapore, I went back to Europe to develop the cell separation technology, enabling continuous manufacturing for cultivated products. Cellular manufacture is already present in our everyday lives making our vaccines, food medicines, bioplastics and biofuels. Recently huge investments were poured into cultivated meat companies with a vision to satisfy growing global demand for meat consumption, but also to reduce greenhouse gas emissions provided by traditional meat production.
But to be able to reach that goal, cultivated meat has to be produced in industrial scale, weak to grow and feed the masses and it has to be grown sustainably and economically. However, those companies are not there yet. Most of the cultivated meat companies, they're still growing at the small scale lab batches to actually prove their products and show it to the market. In fact, scalability was shown as one of the biggest problems of this industry because growing cells, animal cells at the big industrial batches shown productivity limitations and to be able to overcome them, they could try to grow it in continuous manufacturing such as biopharmaceutical industry did before. However, because continuous manufacturing was developed for biopharmaceutical industry, the technologies which are developed for that are extremely expensive and they also top out at limitations of 500 litres.
So there is a glaring need for industrial scale, continuous manufacturing and this is where uFraction8 comes into play. We are doing it by harnessing the power of microfluidics. We have a patented way of parallelizing microfluidics into modules and then we put several modules working together to increase the through control system to industrial level of operations. We are bringing this technology to the 19 billion dollar bio separation instrument market with 2 billion in our direct region. Our business model is
simple. We aim to bring enabling technology to the market. It's like selling shovels in a gold rush. We already have paid pilots for this technology. We bringing these instrumentations with trials with cultivated meat companies and ultimately when we grow it we wanna bring it to the biopharmaceutical industry as well. I'm very happy to be here in Singapore talking about it and on this programme we've grown because over the last six months talking in here and talking with cultivated meat companies, we've put a lot of effort to showing this technology actually working with cultivated meat producers.
We've shown the trials and we we've shown successful demonstrations in this sector and now we have commitments to follow up with paid demonstrations. Moving forward we've run continuously for 45 days achieving four times more product, versus normal technologies and this is actually haven't been done before. We have letters of interest from our potential customers. So we're definitely going forward, but to be able to do this, we need financing to actually finance our next steps. So we are currently raising a 2 million pounds round to be able to bring our technology to the industrial scale 10,000 litre bioreactors and I'm really hoping there are some people in this room who will be able to help me to do that. So if there are any investors interested in discussing that matter, I will be very happy to talk to you afterwards. If there's anybody here who is interested to talk about enabling cultivated meat production and other cellular manufacturing products, I will be super, super happy to have a discussion afterwards at my booth. Thank you very much
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the Technology Showcase of the Global Incubator Programme Gateway to Asia. I hope you've enjoyed hearing from the entrepreneurs tonight. Once again, thank you so much to Her Excellency for joining us and continued support to Innovate UK and Innovate UK Edge for the opportunity to partner with you to internationalise UK Agri Tech to the founders tonight from us. We'd just like to congratulate you for all the hard work in bringing your stories to life today. And we wish you continued success in your business and your expansion into Asia. We have prepared canapes and drinks for each of you in the foyer.
We truly hope that you feel inspired to carry on the conversation about how you might be able to support these entrepreneurs, invest in these entrepreneurs, or even adopt their technologies in your area at work. As a brief reminder, if you scan the QR code on your boarding pass, you can fill out the form to be able to be connected with each of the founders so that you don't miss the opportunity to talk with them. As a reminder, they are in town for just two more days, so if you're really excited about their technology, please do make sure that you book in a coffee with them before they fly home to the UK. For many of you, when you're registered for event via our registration form, you would have the chance to actually select the top three companies you're most interested in speaking to.
So the colour on your name tags actually reflect the colour of the booths and that is one way you can use to network and navigate around the room. You can also use your boarding passes to kickstart your networking journey. So we look forward to hosting you again next year at another technology showcase and bring you a new cohort on the Global Incubator Programme Gateway to Asia. That's all from us tonight. Enjoy the rest of the evening.
Have a good one and we'll see you again.
2023-05-20 12:45
