French lab-grown duck meat and foie gras pioneer Gourmey has acquired chicken lab Vital Meat, taking it a step closer to commercially viable cultivated meat products.
Rebranding to Parima post-acquisition, the company has taken on Vital Meat’s team and Nantes-based infrastructure, including 2,000 litres of bioreactor capacity and advanced poultry cell lines.
“This is the right moment for consolidation and scale,” said Parima CEO Nicolas Morin-Forest.
“We’ve proven economic viability and are now expanding across species. By uniting two pioneering teams, we’re strengthening Europe’s ability to lead the global shift toward efficient and sustainable animal production through innovation, complementing existing methods and building more resilient value chains.”
Gourmey had already achieved a theoretical production cost of below €7/kg for its engineered foie gras. Vital Meat’s own chicken cell lines are “production ready”, according to Parima.
“Joining forces enables us to reach the critical mass needed to serve global, multichannel markets, from premium foodservice to large-scale B2B ingredients,” said Vital Meat founder Etienne Duthoit.
“By bringing together world-class teams in cell line development, bioprocessing and food science, we are accelerating our path to profitability and unlocking powerful drivers of innovation and growth.”
With over 15 patent families and more than 70 patent applications, Parima has become the owner of one of the most advanced intellectual property portfolios in the cultivated food sector.
Nearly half of Gen Z Brits say would eat cultivated or lab-grown meat products, according to Ipsos research.
Younger people are much more likely than older generations to say they would eat cultivated meat, with just one in five (21%) baby boomers and only 32% of the general population saying they would do so.
No comments yet