Meati Foods' Fermentation Assets Find New Life in Plant Cell Culture Push
Boston-based Ayana Bio and India's Zenfold Sustainable Technologies jointly acquired 300,000 litres of fermentation capacity from the defunct alt-protein firm Meati Foods for just $75,000.
The equipment, comprising twelve 25,000-litre stainless steel fermentation tanks originally valued at several million dollars, will be shipped to Zenfold's facilities in India to support plant cell culture production of high-value bioactive compounds.
The deal dramatically cuts the capital expenditure that has historically constrained plant cell culture scaling, with the partnership targeting operational capacity in the first half of 2027.
When Meati Foods entered the Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors process in May 2025, its state-of-the-art biomanufacturing facility in Thornton, Colorado stood as a monument to the difficulties of scaling mycelium-based meat alternatives at commercial speed. Now the physical infrastructure built at considerable expense is finding a second life in an entirely different corner of biotechnology, and at a fraction of its original cost.
Ayana Bio, a Boston-based plant cell culture startup, and Zenfold Sustainable Technologies, headquartered in Bengaluru, India, have jointly purchased twelve 25,000-litre fermentation tanks and associated seed train equipment from the Meati estate. The total cost: $75,000, for assets described by Ayana Bio CEO Frank Jaksch as worth "several million" dollars. The deal gives the partnership 300,000 litres of fermentation capacity, which Jaksch described as fundamentally rewriting the company's capital expenditure efficiency.
What Plant Cell Culture Actually Does
Plant cell culture is a production method that forgoes conventional agriculture entirely. Rather than growing whole plants in soil using sunlight and water, companies grow plant cells inside bioreactors under tightly controlled conditions optimised to produce specific high-value compounds. The process typically begins with plant stem cells or tissue coaxed into a proliferating, stem-cell-like state known as a callus, before being grown in liquid suspension.
Proponents argue the approach offers meaningful advantages over field agriculture: consistent supply insulated from climate disruption, seasonal variation, and geopolitical instability; sterile production free from pesticides and heavy metals; and, in some cases, higher concentrations of target bioactives than conventional farming can achieve. It also sidesteps the land, water, and energy demands of nurturing whole plants when only a single compound is the goal.
Ayana Bio's current focus is on ingredients including rosmarinic acid from sage, crocins from saffron, and zeaxanthin and lutein from marigold. Jaksch noted that recent regulatory attention in the United States towards synthetic preservatives, including a notice related to banning compounds such as BHA, has generated commercial interest in rosmarinic acid as a natural alternative.
Why the Meati Equipment Matters
The stainless steel capital cost of fermentation infrastructure has long been one of the most significant barriers to scaling synthetic biology and plant cell culture. Ayana Bio did not set out to own its own manufacturing facility; Jaksch's stated preference has been for plant cell culture to fit within equipment available at contract manufacturing organisations. The Meati tanks, however, offered an unusual opportunity.
Critically, the 25,000-litre scale sits between typical pilot-scale laboratory equipment and the 100,000-litre bioreactors already operated by Zenfold. Jaksch emphasised that this intermediate step is essential for de-risking larger production runs: running a 100,000-litre bioreactor requires high confidence that a process will perform reliably before committing to it.
Zenfold, established in late 2021 with operations in both Bengaluru and Hyderabad, focuses on specialty and fine chemicals using green chemistry, biotransformation, and synthetic biology. Arun Dubey, a director at Zenfold Sustainable Technologies and managing partner at Zenfold Ventures, noted that the Thornton facility's difficulties were tied to real estate and cost structure rather than the quality of its equipment.
Next Steps and Open Questions
The plan is to decommission and ship the fermentation tanks to India, with a dedicated Ayana Bio pilot facility operational in the first half of 2027. Pilot capacity will also be made accessible to other plant cell culture companies, which could lower barriers for the broader sector.
What remains to be demonstrated is whether the economics of plant cell culture can translate into commercially competitive ingredient pricing at scale. Relocating high-quality fermentation hardware at minimal cost addresses the capital expenditure side of that equation; whether yields and production costs will satisfy commercial buyers is a question that the equipment alone cannot answer.
