Business Spotlight: Cellular Agriculture

Cellular Agriculture, based in Corsham, Wiltshire, is an engineering-led biotechnology company developing advanced bioreactor systems that enable cells to be cultivated at scale for applications including food, life sciences, and biomaterials. By rethinking how cells are grown, the company is helping to unlock more sustainable and efficient ways to produce everything from meat and dairy to next-generation materials.

We caught up with Illtud Dunsford, CEO of Cellular Agriculture to discuss how the company is rethinking food production, the technology behind it, and what’s next for the business.

Can you tell us about Cellular Agriculture?

We’re an engineering company that develops bioreactors - the technology that allows cells to be grown for a range of applications, including food, life sciences (such as pharmaceuticals), biomaterials, and biodefence.

My background is actually in food rather than deep tech. I came into this industry through an interest in cultivated foods, which was widely known as lab-grown meat. After attending a conference, I met a group of academics and began working in an industrial-academic partnership with the University of Bath to explore how cultivated food production could be scaled.

What problem were you aiming to solve when you first began?

Cultivated foods can replicate animal-based products such as meat, seafood, and dairy, but cell cultivation can also be used to produce products like coffee and chocolate.

Climate change is making it increasingly difficult to produce certain foods, particularly coffee and chocolate, as the regions suitable for growing them are shrinking. At the same time, foods like beef are extremely resource-intensive and have a significant environmental impact.

There’s a clear need for new ways to produce food. Our mission is to build the technology that enables this. One of the biggest challenges is that no technology has yet been built at a scale suitable for cultivated food production; most existing systems were developed for pharmaceuticals and vaccines, not food.

What are your core products or services today?

We focus on one flagship technology. Traditionally, cells have been grown in large stainless-steel vessels, a method borrowed from brewing and later adopted by the pharmaceutical industry.

We’ve taken a different approach by looking at how cells grow naturally in the human body or in livestock. Our technology uses hollow fibre membranes, which replicate a natural vascular system. This allows nutrients to be delivered to cells in the same way they would be in a living organism.

Rather than changing the biology of the cells, we’ve built technology that allows them to grow naturally in an environment similar to their original setting.

What has been the biggest milestone for the business so far?

We’re approaching our 10-year anniversary, which is a major milestone for any deep-tech company. Over that time, we’ve achieved several key breakthroughs.

We were the first company to prove this type of technology for food applications and to demonstrate it at scale. In 2024, we also built and successfully proved the longest hollow fibre bioreactor ever created for any cell-based application.

What sets your approach apart from others in the same field?

While the technology itself isn’t entirely unique, very few companies globally are working with hollow fibre membranes for food applications. We are the oldest and most established of those.

Our key differentiator is efficiency, regardless of whether the output is for food or pharmaceuticals, our system can produce more cells in a smaller space than any other existing system.

Why did you join Global Welsh, and how can the community support you?

We first pitched at a Global Welsh event around seven years ago. The reception was very strong and led to genuine investment interest.

We’ve since completed a funding round and are now looking further ahead, not just at investment, but at scaling our technology through strategic global partnerships. Key regions of interest include Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and the Gulf.

As we look towards another fundraising round around 2027, we see strong potential to once again leverage the Global Welsh network for both partnerships and investment.

Your business is now based in England, what led to that move, and would you consider returning to Wales?

The business remains registered in Wales, and all of our patents are still held there. In the early years, operations were split between engineering work in West Wales and laboratory work at the University of Bath.

In 2024, we built a purpose-built R&D facility in Wiltshire to bring our manufacturing and research teams together. That said, South Wales remains very attractive for future manufacturing due to the availability of highly skilled talent.

We’re also exploring international manufacturing options, including Asia, as part of our longer-term strategy.

What’s next for Cellular Agriculture?

We’re now firmly focused on scaling. Having validated our technology at both lab and bench scale, and successfully deployed our first system at Campden BRI, we’ve moved into the pilot phase and recently commissioned our pilot plant. 

Over the coming weeks, we’ll begin our first full pilot runs. The objective here is to further optimise the system, improve yields, and fully define the process in a way that demonstrates true commercial scalability. 

In parallel, we’re targeting the commercialisation of our first product in 2027. From there, the next step is to transition to industrial scale including raising capital to support the development of our first large-scale manufacturing facility for hollow fibre bioreactors.

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