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Clean Food Group has announced that it has recently raised an additional £2.3 million in funding to accelerate commercialisation of its sustainable oils and fats technology. The UK-based biotech company announced a recent collaboration with Alianza Team, as reported by FoodBev last week, which included an investment from the Latin American lipid-based technology specialist. Further investment to support Clean Food Group’s technology scale-up has now been announced, with additional industrial investors including ingredients company Döhler Group and cellular agriculture specialist Agronomics. Agronomics previously invested £900,500 in Clean Food Group in June 2022. Its latest investment of £700,000 as part of the funding round was made using cash from the company's own resources. Jim Mellon, executive director of Agronomics and co-chairman of Clean Food Group also participated in the funding round with a £50,000 investment on the same terms. In total, Agronomics will now hold 30.31% of the equity capital on a fully diluted basis. AIM-traded Seed Innovations Limited, of which Mellon has a 6.95% holding, also invested in the round. Capital raised from this funding will enable Clean Food Group to accelerate the scale-up of its technology platform while advancing critical regulatory and commercial pathways. The additional £2.3 million makes up part of a total of £10 million in funding raised so far. The company expects to complete a Series A funding round in 2024, which will support the build out of a commercial scale manufacturing facility. Clean Food Group has signed a services agreement with Döhler, designed to rapidly scale its fermentation process to a commercial level and enable the manufacture of product batches required for regulatory approval for cosmetics and food applications. A successful fermentation run at 1,000 litres was recently completed, with the manufacture of product batches for regulatory approvals to be completed later this year. Co-founder and CEO, Alex Neves, said: “We are delighted with the rapid progress the business has made in the past year. The successful conclusion of this current funding round validates the important strides our business is taking in solving critical sustainability and supply chain challenges facing our food and cosmetic manufacturer customers.” Clean Food Group and Agronomics' Jim Mellon added: "Agronomics' portfolio speaks to the breadth of disruption emerging from biomanufacturing on conventional agriculture and beyond. This fundraise marks an important milestone for Clean Food Group in the mission to drive transformative changes across the food industry by providing an alternative to palm oil in food and cosmetic production."