Food culture is an integral part of most societies, eating fulfills emotional and social needs in addition to providing nourishment. To produce enough food for a rapidly growing population is a global challenge.

Vow (Foods) is on a mission to make sustainable food both irresistible and available to billions of people.

Vow is a cultured meat company that aims to create totally new and highly desirable food unlike anything before it. Tissue biopsies were taken from non-domesticated animal species and cells isolated that can be grown into meat products. By designing meat products “from the cell up”, Vow create foods with totally new flavours, aromas, shapes and textures.

A pilot plant was recently installed in Sydney with a goal set in January to produce 1 tonne of cultured meat this year (2022), so the plant needed to be fully operational by June - an incredibly ambitious timeline, especially for a company with no previous experience in biomanufacturing! The challenges in procuring, installing, commissioning and operating this plant on a tight deadline were immense; despite this, the key infrastructure consisting of a 2000 L bioreactor train and utilities was installed and commissioned within 3 months of ordering, and the final pieces of equipment will enable the plant to be fully operational on schedule for the end of June.

This is the story of the people and ideas that are building a sustainable and ethical food biomanufacturing business, in record time, right here in Australia.
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    Manufacturing Technical Lead, Vow Foods
    Tom Taranto studied Biomedical Engineering and Commerce at USyd the first time around, worked at CommBank for a few years, then went back to USyd for a PhD in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. After growing a heck of a lot of algae during his PhD, he developed a passion for alternative foods. Since 2019 he has been working in the cultured meat industry, first as a bioprocess engineer at Shiok Meats in Singapore, and now as manufacturing technical lead at Vow in Sydney.
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    Research Scientist, Vow Foods
    Victoria Prior also studied at USyd and was so keen to join Vow, that she started work while she was still writing up her PhD thesis. Victoria comes from a background of 3D cell culture and grew mini-brains from stem cells for her PhD project in brain cancer biology. Joining Vow as a research scientist, Victoria has traded growing brains for growing meat instead, and works with the manufacturing team to scale this process to one day feed billions around the world.
  • 1654563202-22385962e2fdc7e2
    Principal Process Engineer, ICD Asia Pacific Pty Ltd
    Emily Leow is the Principal Process Engineer at ICD Asia Pacific and successfully delivers major design projects, process studies, plant revamps and sustenance projects for a variety of clients.
  • 1654563402-9d2d7e7d204b8f21
    Market Development and Sales Executive - Australasia
    Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE)
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