Giuseppe Scionti, a bioengineer who had worked on regenerating human organs, once showed what he called the world's first plant-based steak at a conference. His company, Novameat, builds the fibres of whole cuts of meat from pea protein and other plant ingredients with a process it calls micro-extrusion.
The European Innovation Council granted €1,860,725 towards a €2.66 million project that ran from January 2022 to December 2023 and developed four market-ready products. Novameat now sells to restaurants and caterers through 16 distributor locations in seven countries and in 2026 began marketing ingredients for "Balanced Protein", products that blend plant fibres into animal meat. Spanish register data compiled by Empresia show 22 employees and sales under €500,000 a year.
Company file
- Legal entity
- Novameat Tech SL, Barcelona, Spain
- Founded
- November 2018
- Founder and CEO
- Giuseppe Scionti
- Business
- B2B supplier of plant-based cuts and hybrid meat ingredients
- Patents
- US 11,779,033 granted; Europe and Japan pending (per CORDIS)
- Public support
- EIC Accelerator, CDTI Neotec, ERDF
- EIC project
- NewMEAT, 1 Jan 2022 to 31 Dec 2023, closed
- EIC funding
- Grant only
Where Novameat Stands Today
Novameat describes itself as a business-to-business company that is "behind the scenes" rather than in shops. Its distributor list names food service wholesalers in Spain, the Netherlands (including four Bidfood depots), Italy, the United Kingdom, Belgium, France and Switzerland. In a review of 2025, the company said it launched pork and lamb products, "increased production capacity tenfold" with a continuous process and "cut ingredient costs by half". In 2026 it added Balanced Protein, ingredients meat manufacturers can mix into mince, burgers and pulled products. The register shows capital increases in 2020, 2022 and 2024, a new board chair in September 2025 and a move of registered address in April 2026.
The Technology: Building Meat Fibres From Plants
According to the CORDIS report, the project took micro-extrusion from "production speeds of less than 1 kilogram per hour" in the lab to "hundreds of kilograms per hour" at industrial scale, from a first R&D facility in Barcelona that opened in 2022. It produced chicken fillets, turkey pastrami, shredded beef and shredded chicken. Novameat's turkey pastrami won best plant-based deli product at the Plant Based World Expo in 2023.
"If you wonder why you cannot find Novameat in retail, it's because we work behind the scenes."
Giuseppe Scionti, founder and CEO, September 2025What the EIC Project Promised, and What CORDIS Shows
The project promised "new micro-extrusion advanced technology for plant-based whole-cut meat substitutes". CORDIS reports the scale-up to industrial speeds, four products and patents. The promises were technical, and the record shows them met.
- Industrial-scale processDeliveredHundreds of kg per hour.
- Whole-cut productsDeliveredFour, then six.
- Market accessDeliveredDistributors in seven countries.
- Revenue at scaleNot shownSales under €0.5M.
What Has Happened Since the Award
The Money
The award was "grant only", so the EIC took no equity. Novameat also lists support from Spain's CDTI Neotec programme and the European Regional Development Fund. In September 2024 Novameat raised €17.4 million in an oversubscribed Series A led by Sofinnova Partners and Forbion's BioEconomy Fund, with Unovis Asset Management, Praesidium and Rubio Impact Ventures reinvesting, to expand into new regions, widen its product range and scale production.
What cannot be checked
Which meat processors buy its Balanced Protein ingredients and its actual production volumes are not public.
Why Europe Should Care
The EIC paid for a technical scale-up that worked. The company's shift in 2026 towards ingredients for animal meat products shows it is now selling to the meat industry as well as to restaurants.
What the project promised
Micro-extrusion at industrial scale for plant-based whole cuts.
What the record shows
Industrial speeds, six products, distributors in seven countries and sales under €500,000 a year.
The Verdict
Technology delivered, sales still small
Novameat did what the EIC paid for. Three years after the project, it is a 22-person company with sales under €500,000, now also selling to the meat industry it set out to replace.
Novameat has not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on company statements, EU project data and Spanish register information, linked throughout.
