Although plant cell culture is already used at commercial scale in cosmetics and pharmaceutical applications, many startups and spinouts are still early in their development journey. These innovators are focused on de-risking, validating, and scaling their processes yet scale-up remains one of the biggest technical and strategic hurdles.

This is especially true for applications like cocoa, coffee, and vanilla, which require large production volumes to achieve commercial viability. While conventional fermentation often reaches scales above 1 million litres, the largest commercial plant cell culture facilities today are around 75,000 litres. As adoption grows, this gap is expected to close, but bridging it will demand smart design, robust engineering, and careful economic planning.