Blue Seafood, a German company that creates farmed (i.e., "lab-grown") fish products, announced today that it has raised €16 million ($17,5 million) in a round of funding from the Serie A.
Founded in Berlin in 2020 originally as Bluu Biosciences, Bluu Seafood starts with a "unique" fish biopsy, which it says doesn't require killing any fish, and then uses stem cell technology to grow entire cell lines (i.e. species of fish) inside a laboratory.
The company introduced its first products last August, including a line of fish sticks (or "fish sticks") and fish balls. These are made from cultured fish cells that are enriched with vegetable proteins, a process that helps make the mouthfeel and cooking process more realistic.
Production problems
Bluu Seafood is one of the many new biotech companies which set out to address the world's seafood production problems, including overfishing, pollution and cruelty. But the movement isn't limited to marine animals, with countless companies raising huge amounts of venture capital money to reproduce everything from bacon to burgers to chicken and more.
Bluu Seafood, for its part, has raised €7,1m in financing so far, and with another €16m in the bank it is now preparing to seek regulatory approval in several markets, including Singapore, which is currently the only market in the world where cultured meat (chicken) is available to buy. However, the Food and Drug Association (FDA) has also begun certifying that edibles are safe for human consumption, and just this week approved two companies to begin selling their lab-grown chicken products. , so we can expect some commercial activity in the United States in the very near future.
Firstly, Bluu Seafood is targeting the Singapore market, where it says it hopes to receive approval in around 2024, while it has also started the approval process with the FDA and will then focus on the European market.
Bluu Seafood's Serie A round was led by Sonae-Subsidiary Sparkfood and LBBW VCwith the participation of delivery hero, SeaX Companies, manta ray companies, Norrsken VC, Hamburgische Investments- und Förderbank y Dr. Oetker.
