The two Aussie startups with opposing plans to make cultivated meat happen
Sydney’s Vow and Melbourne’s Magic Valley are aiming to corner different ends of the waning cultivated meat market. One is aiming high, the other's going low.
There was understandable intrigue when, a few years ago, a handful of startups emerged from laboratories with the promise of cultivated meat. That is, animal meat, without the need for mass slaughter, vast water usage or climate-changing emissions.
At the time, the new era of meat production — developed through a process of nurturing extracted animal cells with the right nutrients and hormones — promised an indistinguishable product from animal meat without the compromises to taste or nutrition that weighed on plant-based alternatives.
But then as global investment in startups faltered amid rising interest rates, cultured meat companies also took a hit, with funding into the segment tumbling as much as 75.5% from 2022 to 2023. Emerging from the carnage, two local startups — Magic Valley and Vow — are hoping that new technologies and different go-to-market strategies will help distinguish them. Their approaches could not be more different, one aiming for the spotlight through high-end restaurant menus, the other for everyday supermarkets competing on price and taste.
“There's many ways to make cultivated meat and we're using vastly different technology [to Vow],” Magic Valley's founder and CEO Paul Bevan told Capital Brief. “We're going after a completely different market and we're producing completely different products.”
