Biotech Firm Liberation Labs Snags $50.5M for Precision Fermentation Factories in US & Saudi Arabia
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US biotech manufacturing company Liberation Labs has raised another $50.5M as part of its funding efforts to build a large-scale facility for precision-fermented foods.
In its newest fundraising round, Indiana-based Liberation Labs has secured $50.5M from investors to build precision fermentation factories in Richmond and Saudi Arabia.
The focus on the latter is spotlit with the involvement of the state-owned NEOM Investment Fund, which provided part of the $31.5M the startup raised in new capital, alongside Galloway Limited, Meach Cove Capital, and existing investors Agronomics, New Agrarian Capital and Siddhi Capital. The remaining $19M comes from insider bridge notes raised last year.
The funds are part of the $75M convertible note round Liberation Labs said it was hoping to raise, which it announced in October 2023 and is geared towards the construction of its first commercial-scale biomanufacturing plant in Richmond, Indiana.
The company has now raised a total of $71.5M in private capital since being founded in 2022, in addition to the $55M it has received in non-dilutive funding commitments – this includes $30M in equipment financing and a $25M loan guarantee from the US Department of Agriculture.
Liberation Labs’s global master plan
Liberation Labs is looking to commercialise precision-fermented ingredients via a global network of dedicated large-scale production plants, which would feature a fit-for-purpose design to enable cost-effective solutions.
Precision fermentation combines the process of traditional fermentation with the latest advances in biotechnology to efficiently produce a compound of interest, such as a protein, flavour molecule, vitamin, pigment, or fat.
The firm has suggested that it can support a range of clients, from well-funded precision fermentation startups to established consumer goods companies. Through the design, construction and operation of its purpose-built biomanufacturing platform, Bio3, it’s also hoping to address two of the biggest challenges facing the sector: capacity and costs.
Its Richmond factory is expected to cost around $115M and will have a fermentation capacity of 600,000 litres, alongside a fully dedicated downstream process. This will allow it to produce between 600 and 1,200 tonnes of protein annually while bringing in $40M in yearly revenue.
Liberation Labs is in the late stages of constructing the facility, which is expected to produce “building block ingredients” for food, chemicals and other industrial products. “We look forward to completing construction of our facility, starting up operations in 2025 and filling a crucial supply gap for biomanufacturing in the US market,” said founder and CEO Mark Warner.
The company’s master plan entails building factories in six geographies, starting with a 600,000-litre launch facility (like the one in Richmond), and eventually opening a plant with a capacity of four million litres in each market. The locations include the US, Europe, the Middle East, Brazil, East Asia, and Australia.
“Liberation Labs is developing state-of-the-art fermentation infrastructure to transform the world’s existing fermentation capacity,” said Agronomics director Jim Mellon. “This will help build a future where precision fermentation proteins reach the industrial scale needed to meet growing demand in the US and across the world.”
Precision fermentation attracting policymakers and investors
Armed with fresh capital, Liberation Labs has become one of the most well-funded companies targeting the precision-fermented food space, which has seen an uptick in interest from investors, despite an overall decline in funding for alternative proteins.
Fellow US firm Helaina, for example, closed a $45M round to commercialise its recombinant breast milk equivalent protein in September, two weeks after Germany’s Formo raised $61M for its animal-free cheeses, including those made from precision-fermented casein. Now, Liberation Labs has joined these pioneering startups, albeit 15 months after first announcing its fundraising plans.
Precision fermentation has also been on the radar of the US government, with five specialist startups winning grants under the final round of the Department of Defense’s Distributed Bioindustrial Manufacturing Program, a scheme to bolster America’s fermentation capacity and defence material supply across food, fuel, fitness, firepower and fabrication.
This included Liberation Labs, which obtained a $1.4M award to conduct a detailed feasibility study for the addition of a flexible-use biomanufacturing facility (with the aforementioned four-million-litre capacity) adjacent to its flagship plant in Richmond. This, the DoD argued, would address the need for bioproducts in food, operational fitness, and fabrication.
Once the prototype assessment and planning phase is completed, Liberation Labs could be selected to proceed to the build stage, which would provide up to $100M to construct new facilities or expand existing ones.
The company will use the latest private capital injection to also design and develop plans for a commercial-scale precision fermentation facility in Saudi Arabia. The Gulf state – which has the world’s biggest net-zero-busting plans for oil and gas expansion – has been keen to ramp up its support for future-friendly foods.
Saudi Arabia has previously partnered with domestic food companies to develop alternative proteins with locally sourced plants, while Prince Khaled bin Alwaleed Al Saud is an investor in firms like Beyond Meat, BlueNalu, and precision fermentation player TurtleTree.
NEOM, Saudi Arabia’s upcoming future-facing city, itself owns Topian, a food company looking to safeguard planetary health and food security through green agriculture, personalised nutrition, and novel food innovations.