Immobazyme, a platform biotech company based in Somerset West, Western Cape, partnered with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in 2023 to scale production of Fibroblast Growth Factor 2 (FGF-2), a protein used in the cultivated meat industry. The outcome is a commercially viable process that significantly reduces the cost of this critical input.
For Nick Enslin, Immobazyme co-founder and chief commercial officer, although this is a leap forward, farmers don’t need to worry about its impact on the livestock industry for the foreseeable future.
“This definitely won’t be an overnight disruption,” Enslin told Farmer’s Weekly. “In my opinion, traditional livestock agriculture will remain dominant for decades to come.”
Scaling a critical input
Immobazyme developed the intellectual property (IP) to produce FGF-2 using genetically modified E. coli, before approaching the CSIR through a formal expression of interest process.
“We had the concept and the IP, but scaling is where it becomes difficult,” Enslin explained. “The CSIR has the expertise and infrastructure to do that.”
The 18-month project focused on taking the process from lab level to industrial scale.
“We are now at the point where we have a commercially viable product that we are able to produce at volumes and price points suitable for commercial use.”
The CSIR provided technical training and process insight, supporting the Immobazyme team to manufacture the protein in their own laboratory. Under the agreement, Immobazyme retains ownership of its IP and pays the CSIR a royalty, a structure Enslin describes as “very favourable to companies bringing their IP to the CSIR”.
Position in the value chain
Immobazyme produces and sells growth factors and high-value proteins, supplying biological ingredients to companies in various industries. Cellular agriculture is one of its end markets.
“Companies producing lab-grown meat take mammalian cells and grow them in controlled environments. The process requires our FGF-2 growth factors, which signal to mammalian cells to divide and proliferate,” Enslin explained.
One of the main barriers to the commercialisation of lab-grown meat has been the cost of inputs.
“In some cases, international suppliers price FGF-2 at approximately US$1 million/g [around R16,5 million/g],” he added.
Thanks to the collaboration with the CSIR, Immobazyme has dramatically reduced the cost of FGF-2 to between R10 000/g and R20 000/g.
“Our ultimate goal was to use lab-grown meat as a technology that can co-exist with and reach price parity with traditional meat. Our partnership with the CSIR has produced an awesome IP that allows us to get good yields and get our product to international markets at more affordable price points,” Enslin said.
Industry correction knocks growth
The cultivated meat industry attracted significant investment in the early 2020s, driven by expectations of rapid commercialisation.
“On paper, lab-grown meat sounds great. The tech really works, and investors thought it would revolutionise meat production. When we started in 2023, cultivated meat had just exploded. But the bubble popped around 2023 to 2025,” Enslin said.
He attributes this to four key factors.
“The first challenge comes with proliferating mammalian cells at scale in huge bioreactors. The cells basically get crushed under the volume.”
The second is cost: “In some models, up to 96% of production costs are associated with the growth medium, of which 70% to 80% is attributed to growth factors such as FGF-2.”
Strict regulatory requirements surrounding issues such as food safety and manufacturing standards are the third constraint.
“Approval processes vary widely by market. In some cases, regulatory approval takes so long and is so expensive that the start-ups die before approvals come through.”
The fourth, and perhaps the most underestimated, is consumer perception.
“What strikes me is how deeply uncomfortable many people are with the idea of lab-grown meat. It goes beyond ‘health concerns’. There’s a gut-level mistrust. People feel disconnected from it, they don’t understand it, and that makes them suspicious,” he explained.
“You can solve the science and the economics, but if consumers won’t put it in their mouths, none of it matters.”
The next decade will be about solving these challenges, by which time new products may have emerged onto the market, he added.
Market remains limited
The cultured meat market is basically non-existent in South Africa. Even globally, it is still in its infancy, valued at US$313,3 million in 2025 (R5,2 billion) and anticipated to reach only US$1,1 billion (R16,6 billion) by 2034, according to Market Data Forecast’s February 2026 Cultured Meat Market report.
“In the US and EU, lab-grown meat is slowly finding a foothold in niche urban markets, with sustainability-conscious consumers and vegans, and in regions with supplier constraints. The problem is that 100% lab-grown meat is up to 10 times more expensive than traditional meat,” Enslin said.
To reduce costs, some manufacturers are blending cultivated meat with plant-based fillers such as mushrooms, he added.
Setting up a laboratory to produce meat prototypes costs between US$5 million and US$10 million (R83 million and R166 million), escalating to between US$300 million and US$500 million (R5 billion to R8,3 billion) to take the product to market internationally, he estimated.
Costs aside, it is technically challenging to produce structured cuts of meat.
“Products like minced meat are far easier to produce than structured cuts such as steak,” Enslin said.
“Replicating a steak is complicated. Some companies have nailed the concept of 3D printing: growing muscle cells and fat cells and 3D printing them to make a steak. However, it is not feasible to produce at scale.”
No immediate threat to livestock
Against this backdrop, Enslin does not see cultivated meat as a threat to livestock producers.
“Traditional livestock farming will be around for decades to come. In many ways, I see opportunities. Agriculture always evolves alongside tech,” he said.
Some of these opportunities may lie in forming partnerships with high-tech companies on the supply side, providing inputs for lab-grown meat.
“Beyond supplying fillers such as mushrooms, farmers can provide biopsies of mammalian cells to cultivated meat producers. Cells are required weekly, so there is money to be made. If you have animals with interesting genetics, such as Wagyu cattle, there is potential to sell their cell lines.”
What’s next for Immobazyme?
Outsourcing the scaling of FGF-2 to the CSIR allowed Immobazyme to continue developing its technology products in other areas, including peptides for the cosmetics industry, starter cultures for the food and beverage industry, a biopolymer and starch-based adhesive for industrial processes, and recombinant proteins and enzyme-based systems for agricultural inputs.
“We are working with one of the largest feed and fertiliser companies in South Africa, using our tech to find interesting and wonderful ways to kill root knot nematodes,” Enslin revealed.
“This is a significant problem in crops such as soybeans and maize, and we will be making an announcement in the near future.”
