ADM Partners With Believer Meats To Help Scale Cultured Proteins

Multinational ingredient maker Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) has entered a non-exclusive memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Israel-based Believer Meats to help develop and commercialize the company’s cell-cultured meat products.

According to the press release, the collaboration will utilize “ADM’s vast ingredient pantry and expertise in complete nutrition solutions” and, ultimately, help fast-track product development. Believer has gained notoriety in the space for claiming its technology can produce meat at lower production costs to roughly $1.8 to $4.5 per pound, making it an appealing proposition to shoppers.

“Partnering with ADM enables an important next step with our ground-breaking cell-cultivation technology – scalability,” said Believer CEO Gustavo Burger. “With access to ADM’s technical and formulation knowledge to build cultivated meat products that have the texture, taste and nutrition consumers expect, we will be able to reach crucial development and commercialization goals efficiently.”

ADM’s relationship with Believer (formerly Future Meat Technologies) officially began in December 2021 when ADM Ventures, the ingredient provider’s investment arm, co-led Believer’s $347 million Series B investment round, which also included capital from Tyson Foods. The company also has a partnership with Nestle that began in July 2021 to scale novel and cost-efficient cell-cultured meat technology.

In total, Believer has raised over $360 million in capital, finding that, like other cultured-meat companies, scaling production of such an undeveloped category of products is requiring large capital expenditures in manufacturing, supply chain, operations and ingredients. s. In December, Believer broke ground on a 200,000 sq. ft. production plant in North Carolina that is expected to produce around 22 million pounds of product.

“Believer is fully committed to transparency, consumer safety, and quality of our cultivated meat products,” Burger said. “This is why our manufacturing process is free of all animal ingredients, and why we chose to have our entire methodology rigorously peer-reviewed and published in the prestigious journal Nature Food.”

The agreement marks ADM’s second partnership with a cultured meat company. ADM entered into a similar joint development agreement with GOOD Meat, the cultured meat division of California-based Eat Just, last May. The collaboration aims to utilize ADM’s expertise in food formulation “to advance the flavor, texture and other attributes” with GOOD Meat’s cultured meat products.

The details about how the partnerships with GOOD Meat and Believer overlap are unknown but ADM told NOSH in a response to written questions that “scalability is key to bringing cultivated meat to fruition.”

“The cultivated meat space is still growing, and there is great potential with more companies and startups coming into play. Collaboration is imperative to help the scalability, commercialization and adoption of novel alternative protein offerings like cultivated meat,” the representative added.

Beyond cell-cultured meat, ADM has also entered a series of partnerships with animal-free food brands and ingredient providers. In 2018, ADM partnered with precision fermentation company Perfect Day to produce animal-free dairy products, however that partnership was dissolved. This past August, alt dairy company New Culture announced it was working with ADM to help commercialize its own animal-free mozzarella product and develop new dairy-free cheeses. Then, in October, ADM announced Plant Plus Foods, a joint venture with Brazilian meat packer Mafrig.

In addition to its work in alt meat and dairy, the company has also looked for other ways to expand its sustainability-focused offerings. Last month, ADM launched Knwble Grwn, a DTC, plant-based ingredient line derived from sustainably sourced crops grown by small or underrepresented farmers who use regenerative agricultural practices. This comes on the heels of a September partnership between ADM and PepsiCo on a 7.5 year regenerative agriculture initiative agreement to expand the practices for both companies across 2 million acres by 2030.

The news of ADM’s collaboration with Believer comes as competitors in the field are moving closer to full federal approval to offering cultured protein products to consumers. In November, Emeryville, California-based Upside Foods became the first cultured meat company to receive Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval to produce a cell-cultured chicken. Last month, GOOD Meat received its own FDA “No Questions” letter getting the company one step nearer to getting products to market.

This story has been edited to include comments from Believer Meats.