Clean Food Group secures £5.2m to scale yeast-derived oils facility
UK biotech Clean Food Group (CFG), the world’s largest yeast-derived oils and fats manufacturer, has confirmed a £4.5 million investment led by Clean Growth Fund and New Agrarian, alongside a £700,000 non-dilutive grant from Innovate UK, to accelerate the scale-up of its fermentation manufacturing facility in Knowsley, Liverpool.
Tom Ellen, Chief Financial Officer of Clean Food Group
The combined £5.2 million package will fund completion of the site’s scale-up, expand production capacity, and drive commercialisation of CFG’s yeast-derived oils and fats across food, cosmetics and pet nutrition markets.
The announcement was made at CFG’s debut at in-cosmetics Global in Paris on 14 April 2026.
Knowsley facility: production at scale
CFG acquired the Knowsley site – a one million-litre fermentation facility – in September 2025, a move that positions the company as the world’s largest manufacturer of yeast-derived oils and fats. The facility enables CFG to produce its proprietary CLEAN Oil™ and CLEAN Fat™ products at commercial scale, using food waste feedstocks and scalable yeast strains.
The company’s CLEAN OilCell™ technology platform is designed to deliver oils and fats at price parity with conventional agricultural alternatives, addressing both cost and sustainability criteria for industrial buyers. In 2025, CFG’s CleanOil™ 25 product received regulatory approval as a cosmetics ingredient in the UK, the US and Europe.
Tom Ellen, Chief Financial Officer of Clean Food Group, said: “The capital raised will enable the Company to bring on stream the world’s largest yeast-derived oils and fats facility and to deliver on our long-term vision for sustainable food manufacturing.”
Investor rationale: supply chain resilience
The investment reflects growing interest in fermentation-derived ingredients as alternatives to tropical and agricultural oils, supply chains that have faced significant pressure from climate volatility and trade disruption.
Jim Mellon, Chairman and Founder of New Agrarian, commented: “War, climate volatility, and trade disputes are presenting a huge challenge to manufacturers; the ingredients we assumed would always be available are no longer guaranteed. Clean Food Group is addressing this problem head-on, using scalable science and technology to build genuine resilience and sustainability into the way we produce and source key ingredients.”
Existing shareholder Döhler Group, a major global ingredients company, also participated in the round. Rodrigo Hortega de Velasco, Managing Partner at Döhler Ventures, noted that the Knowsley acquisition “marks a significant milestone, enabling production at a scale that brings these innovative products closer to widespread commercial reality.”
Market context
The global sustainable food market was valued at US$315 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach US$524 billion by 2032, growing at a CAGR of 6.7%. CFG, founded in 2022 following eight years of research, holds strategic collaborations with leading FMCG and ingredients manufacturers and reports a strong commercial demand pipeline.
