Bluu Seafood secures EUR 16 million for fish cultivation

5 July 2023

Start-up closes Series A funding round - announces plans to advance production plant in Hamburg

The Berlin-based Bluu Seafood start-up has announced plans to advance production of farmed fish at its pilot plant in Hamburg-Altona. This comes after the food biotech secured EUR 16 million in a Series A funding round from the investors Sonae Sparkfood in Portugal and LBBW Venture Capital from the Landesbank Baden-Württemberg. The Asian investor Sea X Ventures and the Innovationsstarter Fonds Hamburg and Dr. Oetker were also involved in the funding round.

Answer to overfishing and rising food demand

The start-up, which was spun off from the Fraunhofer Development Center for Marine and Cellular Biotechnology (EMB) in 2020, has developed cell-based fish in response to overfishing and as a sustainable alternative. Bluu Seafood produces fish meat from fish cells which is then cultivated in a bioreactor. The start-up plans to move into a former marzipan factory in Hamburg-Altona and set up a pilot production factory there in autumn. The fresh capital should enable the approval of the first products i.e., fish balls and fish fingers made from cultured fish cells, which are to be launched on the market in Singapore next year and later in the United States and Europe.

Huge potential for cultivated fish

Bluu Seafood has raised more than EUR 23 million since 2021 and is now moving from laboratory status to scaling production volume. Sebastian Rakers, CEO, has pointed to the "enormous potential of cultured fish" as a platform technology for sustainable animal protein. "The momentum on the market is huge," said Simon Fabich, joint founder, and "especially justified after U.S. regulatory authorities recently approved cell-cultured food and timely launch of first products on the American market. The vision is becoming reality."

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