Green Bioactives LTD (GBL), a company in the production of products derived from plant cell cultures, has announced that it has successfully completed a £2.6 million seed funding round. 

GBL, founded in Edinburgh in 2020, is a leader in the commercial utilisation of plant vascular stem cells, which has allowed it to create a reliable and economically attractive platform for the sustainable biomanufacturing of plant biomolecules for commercial applications in the cosmetics, pharma, food, and agricultural industries. 

David McElroy, CEO of GBL said: “This £2.6m seed funding is an incredibly exciting milestone for Green Bioactives, and we’re delighted to have attracted such a strong international investor base – demonstrating the global commercial potential of our plant cell culture-based biomanufacturing platform.”

The funding will enable GBL to grow its management, production, and research team capabilities, allowing the company to demonstrate its biomanufacturing approach at a larger scale. 

The funding round was led by Eos Advisory LLP and included investments from London-based Regenerate Ventures’ Agtech Fund, London and Singapore co-headquartered Milltrust International Group, and Scottish Enterprise, which also provided the company with advisory support.

Andrew Durkie, Partner at Eos said: “Green Bioactives represents an exciting, innovative approach to the production of plant-derived natural products, and the company’s ethos of sustainability makes it a stand-out player at a time when companies across a range of industries are searching for more environmentally-friendly and commercially-viable ways to produce these kinds of products.

Currently, the company is working with several partners to produce high value bioactives that cannot be readily produced sustainably or economically using alternative production methods. The company’s capabilities span initial isolation of the bioactive producing plant cells through to the supply of the final purified product.

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Now, GBL can continue its sustainable biomanufacturing across different industries with a more substantial in-house team. 

The funds will also be used to pursue new sector-specific commercial partnerships to increase marketing efforts and product sales as well as securing IP and Freedom to Operate on both the company’s core biomanufacturing process components and its product-specific plant cell lines. 

“The investment comes at a key time for the company,” McElroy added, “as we prepare for further growth and continue to develop our technology, working towards our goal of becoming the world’s leading supplier of safe, natural and sustainably-sourced plant-derived products.”

While sustainable tech may be trending, TechNation found that environment-related tech start-ups often struggle in early funding stages. The success of GBL in this round is therefore a good sign in Scotland that green technology can succeed. 

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