ORF Genetics vs the Volcano: EIC Accelerator Meat Growth Factors

Cultivated meat is grown from animal cells, and those cells only multiply when they are fed signalling proteins called growth factors. In 2018 those proteins were the single most expensive input, at roughly €3,000 per kilogram of meat produced, according to the EU's CORDIS project record. ORF Genetics, an Icelandic company that has grown human proteins in genetically engineered barley since 2001, promised the European Innovation Council it could make them cheaply enough to bring cultivated meat to price parity with farmed meat.

The EIC agreed. In the Green Deal cut-off of 19 May 2020, ORF Genetics, listed with its Kópavogur address and described as "a female-lead plant biotechnology company", was one of the winners of the EIC Accelerator pilot, with grant-only funding, according to the European Commission's list of selected companies. The list names no partner company for the project. CCMeat received an EU contribution of €2,500,000 towards a total cost of €3,809,356 and ran from 1 October 2020 to 30 September 2022, according to CORDIS.

Where ORF Genetics Stands Now

ORF Genetics is operating. The Icelandic company register at Skatturinn lists ORF Líftækni hf., trading as ORF Genetics hf., as a registered public limited company with no deregistration, and shows its 2025 annual accounts filed on 1 September 2026. The 2025 figures themselves are not free to view and could not be checked. Insolvency notices in Iceland appear in Lögbirtingablaðið, which requires a paid subscription to search; the register shows no winding-up filing. In February 2026 it signed a distribution deal with the laboratory supplier Tebubio for its ISOkine research growth factors, announced by both ORF and Biotech Spain, and in July 2026 it exhibited at the ISSCR stem cell meeting in Montréal.

In September 2025 the company completed a €5 million share issue with new and existing shareholders, advised by Arctica Finance, and said it wanted to extend the round to €7 million by mid-October 2025. It said the money would raise MESOkine production capacity 14-fold by 2027 and 10,000-fold by 2032, according to AgFunderNews and Green Queen. Neither the company nor any outlet has reported whether the extension to €7 million closed. The headline figure also needs a caveat: ORF's 2024 financial statements say the financing would "partly" consist of converting a 2022 bond, with a book value of ISK 520.1 million, into shares on 29 October 2025, so how much of the €5 million was fresh cash is not public. The board's proposals to the August 2025 general meeting priced the new preference shares at €0.35 each and put the dilution at about 26%.

The Technology: Barley as a Protein Factory

Most recombinant growth factors are made by bacteria, yeast or mammalian cells in steel fermenters. ORF inserts the gene for the target protein into barley, grows the plants hydroponically in a geothermally heated greenhouse, and extracts the protein from the grain, a method known as molecular farming. Green Queen describes the process: plantlets are raised in controlled chambers, moved to automated hydroponic conveyor belts, and the best-producing lines are kept. The company argues that a seed is a natural storage organ, so the protein stays stable, and that plants carry no animal pathogens or bacterial endotoxins. Its MESOkine products are barley seed extracts that also contain native barley proteins, which ORF says stabilise the growth factors, according to AgFunderNews. Neither outlet reports a price or a cost per gram, so the claim that barley is cheaper than fermentation could not be checked.

The method is not new for ORF. Its CCMeat patent application cites the company's own earlier filings on barley-made proteins, including a 2010 application on plant-derived growth factors in skin care, according to Google Patents. For most of its history the main customer for its proteins was its own skincare brand, BIOEFFECT.

BIOEFFECT: The Skincare Twin

BIOEFFECT, a line of serums built on epidermal growth factor (EGF) made in ORF's barley, celebrated its 15th anniversary in May 2025, according to Morgunblaðið. For years it was ORF's business: in 2018 ORF reported revenue of ISK 1,595 million, and its press release named BIOEFFECT as its main source of income, according to Viðskiptablaðið. When ORF applied to the EIC, the CORDIS summary described "our team of over 80 qualified scientists, researchers, marketers and more", a headcount that included the skincare business.

On 8 April 2022, five months before CCMeat ended, shareholders unanimously approved splitting the company in two, effective from 1 January 2022: ORF Líftækni hf. would keep the growth factor business and a new company, BIOEFFECT Holding ehf., would take the skincare operation, according to ORF, Vísir and Morgunblaðið. The combined company had reported 2021 revenue of ISK 2,179 million and a profit of ISK 23.5 million. The register shows that BIOEFFECT Holding ehf. was registered on 8 April 2022 and deregistered on 6 March 2023 after a merger, and that the skincare business now sits in Bioeffect hf., registered at the same address as ORF, Víkurhvarf 7 in Kópavogur.

The two companies are still tied together. Bioeffect hf. is listed as a related party in ORF's 2024 accounts: ORF sold it goods and services worth ISK 79.1 million in 2024 (ISK 119.1 million in 2023) and bought services and rent from it for ISK 61.2 million (ISK 97.9 million). Two directors sit on both boards: Guðbjörg Edda Eggertsdóttir and Knútur Dúi Kristján Zimsen are listed among ORF's board members in its register entry and were re-elected to the Bioeffect board in April 2026, according to Viðskiptablaðið. ORF's website still sells DERMOkine growth factors for cosmetics on its home page.

BIOEFFECT is the far larger business. It reported revenue of ISK 2,155 million and a loss of ISK 9 million for 2024, with 55 employees, according to Morgunblaðið, and revenue of ISK 2,267 million and a loss of ISK 146 million for 2025, according to Viðskiptablaðið. In late 2025 the US e-commerce firm Quantifi (TEG Commerce LLC) agreed to invest USD 2.5 million in new BIOEFFECT shares, a deal on which Arctica Finance advised. The skincare brand's money is not ORF's, but ORF's largest single customer in 2024 was still BIOEFFECT.

What CCMeat Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The plan on CORDIS had two parts. Technically, ORF would develop animal growth factors in new barley lines, move cultivation from its 2,000 m² greenhouse in Iceland to fields, and introduce a new protein processing technology, with patents for the MESOkine line and for the processing method "to be filed" in June and July 2020. Commercially, it promised that MESOkine would cut growth factor costs from €3,000 to about €0.7 per kilogram of meat by 2030, reach a 40% market share within five years and "reach profitability of €19 million by 2026".

The final periodic report says work "in general, proceeded as planned". New barley lines producing animal growth factors were developed, more than planned, and an outside lab, SBH Sciences in the US, found their bioactivity "equivalent or better than industry standard". Field trials in Iceland and Canada succeeded in both years. A new seed processing line handles more than 100 kg of grain, and process changes raised yields "several fold". An affinity purification technology ran into scale-up problems with a supplier and was replaced by a simpler setup. ORF said it was selling MESOkine to several cultivated meat companies at prices "20-100 times lower" than it could offer before the project. One PCT application on the product composition had been filed; the second, on the production method, was postponed to the first quarter of 2023.

1. Animal growth factors in barleyDeliveredBovine, porcine and avian MESOkine products on sale, per CORDIS and ORF's website.
2. Field cultivation scale-upDeliveredTrials in Iceland and Canada in both project years, per the CORDIS report.
3. New processing technologyPartialYields up several fold; the planned affinity technology was replaced after scale-up problems.
4. MESOkine composition patentFiledPriority 5 June 2020, published as WO2021245711; national phases pending.
5. Processing method patentNot foundMoved to Q1 2023; no later filing under ORF's name in a Google Patents assignee search.
6. 40% market share, €19M profit by 2026MissedTotal sales of ISK 123.9M in 2024, most of them to BIOEFFECT.
7. €0.7 per kg of meat by 2030OpenNo price data published; capacity targets now run to 2032.

The patent record bears out the first filing. The composition application, "Growth factor composition for cell culture-produced meat", was filed in Iceland on 5 June 2020, published as WO2021245711 on 9 December 2021 and entered national phases in the US, Europe, Japan, Korea, China, Australia and Canada, all shown as applications without a grant, according to Google Patents. The second patent has not appeared, and no announcement of it could be found.

The project ended on time. Its technical work was largely done; its commercial forecast was not. That is a familiar gap for EIC beneficiaries, but here it is wide: the company that promised €19 million of MESOkine profit by 2026 sold ISK 123.9 million of goods and services across all its product lines in 2024.

The Greenhouse Under the Lava

The 2,000 m² greenhouse at the heart of the CCMeat plan stood just north of Grindavík on the Reykjanes peninsula. It was badly damaged in the earthquakes of November 2023 and has not been used since. On 14 January 2024, as an eruption sent lava within about a hundred metres of it, CEO Berglind Rán Ólafsdóttir told Morgunblaðið the building was effectively ruined and that development work continued in Canada and at the Kópavogur headquarters.

Natural Catastrophe Insurance of Iceland declared the property a total loss, and Grindavík municipality ruled out rebuilding because the site stands on an earth fissure, according to the 2024 accounts. ORF received ISK 383 million for the building and ISK 88 million for movable assets, and has leased a greenhouse in Biskupstungur since mid-2024. In November 2024 the CEO told Morgunblaðið that the company was renting a greenhouse in Laugarás that was somewhat smaller than it planned to need, that it expected to stay there for at least two years, and that ten companies in Asia, the US and Europe were using its growth factors. In April 2025 she told Morgunblaðið that the company "will not operate there again". ORF says it held enough seed stock that the loss would not hurt sales or scale-up plans. Where a larger permanent greenhouse will be built has not been announced.

The Money

The 2024 accounts show a small company that has not yet found a large market. Sales of goods and services were ISK 123.9 million, up from ISK 117.0 million. The company made a profit of ISK 16.0 million after a loss of ISK 328.2 million in 2023, but the turnaround came from other operating income of ISK 610.2 million, which includes the insurance payouts and grants. Average staff stayed at 22, and the company had 19 employees at the end of 2024. Equity was ISK 1,019 million, much of it capitalised development cost for its barley lines, and the bond due in 2025 stood at ISK 520.1 million. The accounts say the 2025 financing "secures the company's going concern through 2027".

ORF did not raise money from the EIC Fund. The grant was grant only, and ORF Genetics does not appear on the EIC Fund's list of invested companies (all 16 pages checked in October 2026). A CORDIS search for the company returned no EU project other than CCMeat.

Customers in a Market That Barely Exists

ORF names Vow, the Australian cultivated meat company, as a MESOkine customer, according to AgFunderNews and Green Queen, and in February 2024 the two companies hosted what they called Europe's first official cultivated meat tasting in Iceland, where Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir ate Vow's cultivated quail, according to ORF and vegconomist. The vegconomist report does not say whether the quail served was grown with ORF's growth factors. In October 2023 ORF signed a memorandum of understanding to supply South Korea's SeaWith, according to Protein Report. No order volumes or contract values have been published for any customer.

The sales figures make the constraint plain. Vow's cultivated quail is served in restaurants in Singapore and Australia, Green Queen reports, but the customers are start-ups producing small volumes. ORF's own pitch is a bet on timing. "The question is not if this market will grow, but when and how fast," the CEO told AgFunderNews in September 2025. The company also sells ISOkine growth factors and cytokines for stem cell, organoid and cell therapy research, its website shows.

Why Europe Should Care

On 20 March 2024 the European Commission adopted a set of actions to boost biotechnology and biomanufacturing in the EU. A European supplier of animal-free growth factors made with geothermal power fits that agenda, and growth factors are, by the CORDIS record's own account, the costliest input for any cultivated meat producer. That industry does not yet sell in Europe: the first EU application for a cultivated meat product, Gourmey's duck foie gras, was filed only in July 2024, according to European Biotechnology. Once a novel food is approved, it can be sold across the EU and in Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, vegconomist notes. Until then, ORF's European home market for MESOkine consists of research and development.

The Verdict

ORF Genetics has not been asked for comment for this article. It is based on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout.