7 March 2024
BSF
Enterprise PLC
("BSF" or
the "Company")
BSF
Enterprise (Hong Kong) Ltd and Ivy Farm Technologies Enter
Partnership
BSF (LSE: BSFA), (OTCQB: BSFAF), the Main Market listed biotech and
industrial tissue engineering company and owner of
pioneering UK-based tissue engineering company 3D Bio-Tissues
(3DBT) and corneal tissue replacement
company Kerato, is now working with the UK's leading
cultivated meat production company, Ivy Farm Technologies Limited
(Ivy Farm) to help fundraise, launch and scale its cultivated meat
plans in China.
BSF Enterprise (Hong Kong) Ltd (BSF
HK) was recently formed as a separate entity under the BSF
Enterprise umbrella to develop a distribution and partner network
in the Greater China market. Given BSF HK's
strong presence and investor network within the Asian cultivated
meat and tissue engineering market, it is looking to partner and
work with a number of other biotech and green tech companies. Today
BSF is delighted to announce it has entered into a commercial
agreement with Ivy Farm that will involve generating and
progressing investment opportunities to support the company's
fundraising ambitions. BSF subsidiary company 3DBT is also working
with Ivy Farm to test its City Mix™
serum-free media within its products with the goal
of reducing the cost of cultivated meat production in the Asian
market.
Ivy Farm was spun out from the
University of Oxford in 2019 and its unique technology produces
nutritious mincemeat from premium Wagyu Beef, Aberdeen Angus, and
English Large White Pork tissue to create delicious final products
such as meatballs, scotch eggs and burgers. In 2022, Ivy Farm
unveiled a pilot plant in Oxford with production capabilities of
2.8 tonnes of cultivated meat a year, all powered by solar, the
largest of its kind in Europe.
BSF will be
supporting Ivy Farm's ongoing funding round, aimed at facilitating
the scaling up of technology to accommodate large production-sized
fermenters. In the future Ivy Farm envisions producing 12,000
tonnes from a single efficient facility, fully powered by renewable
energy, thereby slashing greenhouses gases by 92% and land use by
90% compared to industrial farming practices. The production of
cultivated meat at scale is critical, especially considering
China's annual consumption of over 100 million tons of meat, which
constitutes more than a quarter of global meat
consumption.
Professor Cathy Ye, Co-Founder of Ivy Farm and Director at the
Oxford Centre for Tissue Engineering and Bioprocessing
(OCTEB), expressed her enthusiasm
about the partnership, emphasizing her personal connection to China
where she was raised and earned her Bachelor's degree in Chemical
Engineering from Dalian University of Technology. She highlighted
the significant potential for sustainable food security in the
region that can be enables by the unique cell lines and technology
created at Ivy Farm.
Che Connon, Managing Director
of BSF Enterprise and CEO of 3DBT,
commented: "Today's announcement
represents the start of a strong commercial and technical working
relationship between BSF Enterprise and Ivy Farm. The cultivated
meat market is front and centre for China
in its
blueprint for food security as part of its five-year agricultural
plan. We look forward to helping Ivy Farm enter the China market
through securing investment and working with key manufacturers to
develop a variety of cultivated meat products that can serve a
significant, growing market."
For further enquiries, please
visit www.bsfenterprise.com or
contact:
Notes to Editors
About BSF Enterprise PLC:
BSF Enterprise PLC (BSF) is focused
on unlocking the next generation of biotechnological solutions -
using cell-based tissue engineering to help generate cultured meat,
lab-grown leather, as well as human corneas, collagen growth and
skin substitutes, as part of a radical transformation to deliver
sustainable solutions across a variety of sectors.
It owns 100% of 3D Bio-Tissues
(3DBT), a tissue engineering with patent-protected IP that is
already producing human corneas for testing to help restore vision
to millions of people. Building on this success, it aims to
produce the UK's first high quality leather from its
laboratory in Newcastle, transforming the leather industry towards
an ethical and sustainable practice.
BSF aims to deliver growth to
shareholders through the continued commercialisation of 3DBT's IP,
which has multiple applications, as well as through M&A. It
aims to develop a suite of technologies that underpins the
development of tissue templating for corneas, meat and leather, and
license out the IP to manufacturers, wholesalers and distributors
to help manufacture the products at scale.
About Ivy Farm Technologies:
Ivy Farm Technologies is an
innovative cultivated meat company on a mission to create
guilt-free, real meat to tackle one of the world's biggest
polluters - industrial agriculture - and to help the world reach
its net-zero goals. Initially spun out of Oxford University, the
company has unique technology that enables it to tackle the
scale-up and cost down challenges of the industry.
BSF Enterprise PLC
|
Via SEC Newgate below
|
Geoff Baker - Executive
Director
Che Connon - CEO &
Director
|
|
|
|
Shard Capital (Broker)
|
|
Damon Heath
Isabella Pierre
|
0207 186 9000
0207 186 9927
|
|
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SEC Newgate (Financial
Communications)
|
|
Bob Huxford
Elisabeth Cowell
|
020 3757 6882
BSF@secnewgate.co.uk
|
ISIN of the Ordinary Shares
is GB00BHNBDQ51
SEDOL Code is BHNBDQ5.