Using re-usable plastic bioreactors rather than pricey steel tanks for plant cell culture could enable the cost-effective bioproduction not just of high-value cocoa-based nutraceuticals, but even a commodity such as cocoa itself, claims California Cultured.
The Davis, CA-based firm, which recently struck a 10-year offtake deal with Japan’s largest chocolate company Meiji, completed construction of its lab and office space earlier this year. It is now building a pilot plant in Sacramento to produce its first commercial products in Q2 or Q3 of 2026.
AgFunderNews (AFN) caught up with CEO Alan Perlstein (AP) at the SynBioBeta conference in San Jose to find out more.
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AFN: What is needed for the commercially viable production of cocoa via plant cell culture?
AP: You need to have very low cost production, and we think the best way of doing that is moving away from steel systems.
The second part is making sure that the cells produce multiple different products and side streams at the same time.
And the third is making sure that everything is as automatable or as scalable as possible. Putting all these factors together, we think is the key to getting to basically commodity breakeven, and even beyond that, as this type of technology scales.
AFN: What bioreactor setup do you have? Â
AP: We’ve been working on new types of bioreactors that are mass producible and are made from a non-leachable plastic. And that is a very exciting technological leap, because we think that this can truly reduce the cost of scale up for many different parts of the biomanufacturing industry.
We can use it [the reactor] thousands of times before we need to replace it. And we’ve been testing this over the last two years very successfully.  Our tanks will be of considerable size and producing at volumes large enough for our first few partners.
AFN: How are the bioreactors sterilized between batches?
AP: We use a low-energy, sustainable, FDA-approved food grade sterilization process that’s just starting to have wide scale adaptability. And the benefit of it is that it can be produced on demand, it’s very power efficient, and it can be used to sterilize a tremendous amount of equipment with a very fast turnaround time, which is also very important for the COGs (cost of goods) and unit economics.
AFN: Tell me about your cell lines…
AP: We are using de-differentiated cells [cells that have been turned back into a stem-cell-like state]. We use a mix of cell selection, metabolomics, and some proprietary technologies that we’ve been working to develop, and we’ve been able to really manipulate many of the cell traits and the biology of the cells to where they do what we want them to do, time after time. We also make sure that they are very genetically stable.
AFN: How would cocoa or cocoa products from plant cell culture be labeled?
AP: We’re going to appeal to the FDA to label this as cocoa or maybe even clean cocoa, since it has far fewer contaminants than traditional cocoa. We could also call it enhanced cocoa. There’s a lot of monikers that we’re currently exploring, but overall, we think cocoa is best because it has all the flavors and compounds and bioactivity that traditional cocoa has.
With this type of technology, we think we can create truly the purest products with no lead, cadmium, or any of the contaminants that are present in almost every soil-grown product out there.
AFN: What’s your manufacturing and scaleup plan?
AP: Originally, we were looking at both co-manufacturers and internal production, but due to tariffs and some of the drama in global trade, we have refocused on internal production. We saw, with our unit economics, that we could build our entire facility in the same timeline with the same costs that it would cost us to do co-man runs.
AFN: What are the first products you’re working on?
AP: We are first starting with the flavanol part of cacao, because demand is outstripping all supplies. In [conventionally-grown] cocoa, about 0.1% of its mass is flavanols, whereas we can produce a lot more on a gram-by-gram basis. So that first product would be for nutraceuticals, foods, powders, drinks, candy bars… dozens of applications.
But right behind it is our cocoa. That is going to be our more mainstream product, but it uses the same technology, systems, and regulatory pathway.
AFN: What kind of interest have you seen from the market?
AP: We’ve had overwhelming interest. Many of our partners and those that we’re looking to partner with, are ravenous for chocolate and we’re trying very hard to meet their demands. But we honestly see the demand is so great that even if we grow 1,000% year-over-year, we won’t be able to scratch the surface.
Currently, we’re partnered with Meiji chocolate. We have signed a 10-year offtake agreement with them, and we’re in advanced conversations with many of the world’s top 10 chocolate producers and suppliers, so we’re looking to close many of these partnership deals over the course of the next year or two.
And from there, we’re very excited that we’re going to be able to work with these partners to bring cocoa, not only to the United States, but globally as well.
AFN: When do you expect to come to market?
AP: We’re submitting our GRAS [Generally Recognized as Safe] dossier [in the US] in the early part of the summer and we’re looking to have our ‘no questions’ letter [from the FDA] towards either the end of Q4, 2025, or somewhere in the beginning of Q1, 2026. It’s non GMO and all our media components are food grade, so it’s very low risk.
After that, we’re building our facilities out so we can start producing [at larger scale], and we’re working with our partner to develop recipes and formulations and working with larger food producers to start figuring out the packaging. So we’re looking at either Q2 to Q3 of next year when we’re going to have some products on the market.
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