Orbillion Bio and Solar Biotech partner to sustainably scale up cell-cultured meat production beyond 1.8 million kilos

Orbillion Bio, a USA-based cell-cultured meat pioneer, has announced a partnership with Solar Biotech, a leader in SynBio bioprocessing technologies, to further develop and scale up the production of premium cell-cultured Wagyu beef for US consumers. The partners plan to scale up to 20,000-liter bioreactors, in doing so generating capacity for annual production of over 1.8 million kilograms of meat.

Orbillion now has a clear path to US-based commercialization of its first product, cell-cultured Wagyu beef. Moreover, as the production facilities are water-neutral and fully powered by solar energy, Orbillion will be the first and only company in the space to truly achieve the emissions and sustainability goals expected of cell-cultured meats.

If renewable energy is used to power cell-cultured meat production, it could reduce global warming impacts by 85-92% and land use by up to 95% versus conventional beef production, according to analysis by Senior Scientist Elliot Swartz at the Good Food Institute.

The partnership will combine Orbillion’s proprietary cell culture platform with Solar Biotech’s scale-up bioprocess development capabilities and infrastructure, proprietary AI-driven bioprocess controlling software, new biosensing technologies, and vertically integrated engineering, and previous experience commercializing mammalian cell cultures for animal-free meat.

Orbillion was the first in the world to showcase cell-cultured Wagyu beef, elk and lamb products. With its recently announced partnership with Luiten Food to bring its meats to Europe by 2025, it is positioning itself to become a global leader in cell-cultured beef. The new strategic partnership with Solar Biotech enables Orbillion to achieve production at a significantly higher scale, sustainably, while keeping costs low. This reinforces their commitment to achieve price parity with conventional meat by 2026 and commodity pricing for beef by 2030.

"Orbillion’s innovative business model will bring to market the highest quality cell-cultured beef, while being cost competitive," commented Patricia Bubner, CEO of Orbillion. "Our technology has already allowed us to produce meat that comes from non-GMO cells and that is free of fetal bovine serum (FBS), and by partnering with Solar Biotech we can move more swiftly to reach price parity."

This partnership marks Solar Biotech’s first foray into the cell-cultured beef industry after their success in the animal-free chicken segment. By providing cutting-edge bioprocessing technologies, the company aims to reimagine the way high-value products are manufactured. Together with Orbillion’s in-house bioprocessing expertise, Solar Biotech enables the production of cell-cultured beef in a more sustainable and scalable way.

"At Solar Biotech, we develop world-class bioprocessing technology together with leading players in biotech. We now want to bring our knowledge and decades of experience into creating real impact in the sustainable food tech space, and there is no better partner than the Orbillion Bio team. We see our technical synergy with Orbillion as an opportunity to enter a rapidly growing higher value cellular agriculture segment, which will yield long term significant recurrent revenue for both parties with attractive profit margins" says Alex Berlin, CEO & CTO of Solar Biotech. "They bring significant expertise in world-class bioprocessing and food, and we are looking forward to investing in this partnership to bring cost-effective and nutritious foods to market."