Upside Foods, a cultured meat company, has halted its plans to build a 187,000-square-foot facility in Glenville, IL.
The company announced in September 2023 that it will construct a facility called Rubicon, “our first large-scale cultivated meat production plant with an appreciation for its historical significance as a point of no return.”
The facility was slated to begin manufacturing ground-cultivated chicken products, intending to diversify into other species and formats. It was set to commence operations with a capacity to produce millions of pounds of cultivated meat products, with the possibility of scaling up to 30 million pounds in the future.
According to Meat + Poultry, a company spokesperson said during the planning phase for Rubicon that they discovered a more efficient and cost-effective method to attain a comparable capacity and timeline for the initial phase by substantially expanding their operations in Emeryville, CA.
Upside Foods received USDA approval to begin the production and sale of cultivated chicken in June 2023.
