3D Bio-Tissues Partners with SeaWith to Reduce Cultivated Meat Production Costs

3D Bio-Tissues (3DBT), a wholly-owned subsidiary of BSF Enterprise PLC (LSE: BSFA), has entered into a strategic partnership with South Korea–based cultivated meat company SeaWith. The collaboration focuses on reducing production costs associated with cultivated beef by improving the efficiency of cell growth media.

SeaWith is incorporating City-Mix®, 3DBT’s proprietary macromolecular crowder media additive, into its cultivated beef development programme. The use of City-Mix® is designed to enhance cell growth efficiency while reducing overall media consumption, a key cost driver in cultivated meat production.

Improving Media Efficiency Through Macromolecular Crowding

City-Mix® is based on macromolecular crowding principles that more closely replicate the biochemical conditions found in natural tissue environments. By increasing the effective concentration of biologically relevant molecules within the culture medium, the additive supports improved cell behaviour and productivity without increasing reliance on costly growth factors.

For cultivated meat producers such as SeaWith, this approach offers a practical route to lowering operating costs while maintaining robust cell performance, an essential step towards commercial viability.

Supporting Commercial Scalability in Asia

The partnership reflects a shared focus on addressing one of the cultivated meat sector’s most persistent challenges: the high cost of cell culture media at scale. By working with SeaWith, 3DBT is supporting efforts to move cultivated beef production closer to commercial scalability, particularly within the rapidly developing Asian alternative protein market.

Importantly, the collaboration positions 3D Bio-Tissues as a technology and process enabler, supplying media optimisation solutions rather than producing cultivated meat itself. This aligns with 3DBT’s broader role within the cultivated food ecosystem as a provider of enabling technologies that help partners improve efficiency, consistency, and scalability.

A Platform Approach to Cultivated Meat Production

The SeaWith collaboration builds on 3DBT’s wider strategy of working with cultivated meat companies globally to optimise upstream processes. By reducing media usage and improving cell growth efficiency, technologies such as City-Mix® play a critical role in supporting more sustainable and economically viable cultivated meat systems.

As the cultivated meat sector continues to mature, partnerships focused on process innovation and cost reduction are expected to be central to achieving long-term commercial success.