Overview

Food culture is an integral part of most societies, eating fulfils emotional and social needs in addition to providing nourishment. To produce enough food for a rapidly growing population is a global challenge.

Vow (Foods) is on a mission to make sustainable food both irresistible and available to billions of people.

Vow is a cultured meat company that aims to create totally new and highly desirable food unlike anything before it. Tissue biopsies were taken from non-domesticated animal species and cells isolated that can be grown into meat products. By designing meat products “from the cell up”, Vow create foods with totally new flavours, aromas, shapes and textures.

A pilot plant was recently installed in Sydney with a goal set in January to produce 1 tonne of cultured meat this year (2022), so the plant needed to be fully operational by June - an incredibly ambitious timeline, especially for a company with no previous experience in bio-manufacturing! The challenges in procuring, installing, commissioning and operating this plant on a tight deadline were immense; despite this, the key infrastructure consisting of a 2000 L bioreactor train and utilities was installed and commissioned within 3 months of ordering, and the final pieces of equipment will enable the plant to be fully operational on schedule for the end of June.

This is the story of the people and ideas that are building a sustainable and ethical food bio-manufacturing business, in record time, right here in Australia.

Speakers

Tom Taranto, Manufacturing Technical Lead, Vow Foods

Tom Taranto studied Biomedical Engineering and Commerce at USyd the first time around, worked at CommBank for a few years, then went back to USyd for a PhD in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. After growing a heck of a lot of algae during his PhD, he developed a passion for alternative foods. Since 2019 he has been working in the cultured meat industry, first as a bioprocess engineer at Shiok Meats in Singapore, and now as manufacturing technical lead at Vow in Sydney.

Victoria Prior, Research Scientist, Vow Foods