Czech Startup Mewery Turns Cultivated Pork Into a Surprise Cosmetics Ingredient

How Mewery Grows Pork in a Lab — and Stumbled Onto a Cosmetics Business

Mewery, a Brno-based startup with laboratories on the Mendel University campus, is developing pork that never came from a farm. The process starts with umbilical cord cells from a newborn pig, which are isolated and cultivated in a special medium. Over time the company built up a bank of these cells and no longer needs to collect new ones. The animal cells are then combined with microalgae cells, which give the resulting mass structure and add vitamins, antioxidants, minerals, fibre and essential fatty acids.

The company says it can now extract at least 300 grams of biomass from a litre of medium, compared with the roughly 100 grams per litre that is typical in the field. That biomass can go in two directions. It can be turned into meat — the flagship product is a pork burger, with nuggets and ham-style salami also under development — or it can be purified to extract molecules used in cosmetic serums. Those molecules are difficult to produce synthetically, according to founder Roman Lauš, and the cosmetics route was not part of the original plan.

Regulation is the immediate constraint. Cultivated meat cannot yet be sold or publicly tasted in the Czech Republic, but Lauš expects the country to approve tastings in a controlled environment by the end of the year, making it the second European country after the Netherlands to do so. That matters because the company can currently only taste its own products internally. Cosmetic extracts face a faster approval path, and Mewery expects to reach a more advanced testing phase next year, with a new laboratory dedicated to cosmetics ingredients due within months.

The commercial plan is to supply other companies rather than sell under its own brand. Mewery intends to move large-volume production to a foreign partner's factory, then build its own plant in roughly three years — location undecided and dependent on the investment round now under way. It also plans to expand into Singapore next year, where approval is faster, and to file applications with European and US regulators, with US supply possible in about three years.

Why Mewery's Cosmetics Pivot Is Really a Financing Strategy

Why the Cosmetics Route Comes First

The cosmetics angle is not a side project so much as a financing mechanism. Cultivated meat requires years of regulatory work before a single euro of revenue, and Mewery's own founder estimates that even after one company wins European approval, others will still wait around two years. Cosmetic extracts, by contrast, need fewer permits and can reach the market sooner. Lauš is explicit that faster cosmetics revenue is meant to fund the core cultivated-meat platform, reducing dependence on repeated investor rounds. For a capital-intensive biotech startup, that is a materially different risk profile from a pure regulatory waiting game.

What the Cost Curve Says

Mewery says it can currently reach €10 per kilogram with partners, and that large-volume production should bring costs down to about €2 per kilogram. If that holds, cultivated pork moves from a novelty into a plausible ingredient for processed meat products. The company's stated intention — to supply ground meat to businesses that package and distribute it, rather than build a consumer brand — fits that cost logic. It also lowers the marketing burden: the end product carries someone else's label.

Singapore, the EU and the Two-Year Gap

Singapore is the near-term market because its approval process is faster, and Mewery plans to supply luxury restaurants there next year. Europe and the US are the larger prizes but slower. The EU pathway is being tested by French startup Gourmey, which is seeking approval for cultivated foie gras, and Dutch company Mosa Meat with beef. Lauš believes Gourmey is closest, and that a first approval would open the door for others without making their own applications automatic. For context, the global cultivated-meat sector has attracted investment from large food companies including Nestlé, and traditional meat producers have also shown interest — a signal that incumbents are hedging rather than treating the technology purely as a threat.

What the Beyond Meat Example Warns About

Lauš points to Beyond Meat's decline as a cautionary tale, arguing that its IPO timing and strategy were poorly chosen and that consumers often did not know how to prepare the product. He contrasts it with Impossible Foods, which stayed private longer and put its product into restaurants such as McDonald's first, so customers encountered it in a controlled setting. The lesson Mewery appears to be applying is to enter through foodservice and ingredient supply, not retail shelves. The broader market context he describes is a first wave of hype that has faded and a second, slower growth phase that has yet to fully arrive.

Where the Money and the Plant Go

Mewery has already raised more than 100 million Czech koruna from Credo Ventures, Purple Ventures and Big Idea Ventures, plus grants, and is now raising tens of millions more. The outcome of that round will determine whether the future factory is built in the Czech Republic or elsewhere. Until then, production scales through an unnamed foreign partner. The company also says its technology can cultivate any type of meat, with fish as a possible next step — a claim that, if validated, would widen its addressable market considerably.

What Mewery's Dual-Track Plan Means for Investors and Food Companies

The most important insight: Mewery is using a faster, less-regulated cosmetics ingredient business to finance a slower, heavily regulated cultivated-meat platform — a structure that reduces its dependence on venture capital.

• Investors evaluating the current round should treat the cosmetics extracts and the cultivated pork as two separate bets with different timelines. Cosmetics could generate revenue within roughly a year of advanced testing; meat revenue depends on regulatory approvals that Mewery itself estimates at around two years after a first European approval.
• Watch the Czech tasting approval expected by the end of the year. It would make the Czech Republic the second EU country after the Netherlands to allow controlled tastings, giving Mewery its first external consumer feedback loop.
• Food companies and meat processors should note Mewery's stated intent to supply ground meat and ingredients rather than build a consumer brand. That positions it as a potential supplier, not a direct competitor, to established meat businesses.
• Cosmetics manufacturers sourcing hard-to-synthesise molecules have a potential new supplier entering advanced testing next year, with a dedicated laboratory due within months.
• Track the cost figure. Mewery cites €10 per kilogram today with partners and a target of about €2 per kilogram at large volume. Progress toward that target is the clearest signal of whether cultivated pork can compete as an ingredient.
• Watch the unnamed foreign manufacturing partner and the location decision for Mewery's own plant, both tied to the ongoing fundraise. A Czech site would signal confidence in domestic regulatory support; a foreign site would signal the opposite.