The exhibition at The Future of Protein Production Amsterdam has sold out ahead of the November 4-5 event, with more than 60 exhibitors confirmed and over 50 startups expected to attend. The conference programme will put some of the sector’s hardest commercial questions to food manufacturers, investors and biotechnology companies.

At RAI Amsterdam, speakers will address the cost of producing new proteins at industrial scale, the difficulty of financing first commercial plants and the obstacles companies face when seeking regulatory approval and customers.

More than 140 speakers are scheduled across The Future of Protein Production and the co-located Cultured Meat Symposium. Organisations represented include Unilever, Danone, Oatly, dsm-firmenich, Givaudan, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Aleph Farms, the Good Food Institute, ProVeg and RISE.

Several discussions will examine Europe’s ability to develop and manufacture food biotechnology at commercial scale. The questions are practical: whether production can become cheap enough for food manufacturers to buy, how companies can obtain the necessary approvals and where the money for new facilities will come from.

For fermentation and cultivated meat businesses, a successful pilot run is only one part of the problem. Large-scale production brings different demands for equipment, raw materials, downstream processing and consistent output. The conference will look at those constraints, including the decisions that determine whether a process can operate at a commercially acceptable cost.

A session titled ‘Funding Future Proteins in 2027: Ask the Investors’ will bring together Diana Rucinschi of the European Innovation Council, Jeroen Tjepkema of Rockstart, Jürgen Keil, an advisor to Planet A Foods and former Cargill executive, and Ugur Yuksel of ABN AMRO Sustainable Impact Fund. Moderated by Devika Suresh of ProVeg Incubator, the discussion will examine what investors now expect from protein companies, including those seeking funding for their first commercial facilities.

The Cultured Meat Symposium will take a close look at the sector’s progress in ‘Where Is Cultivated Meat Really in 2026?’ Didier Toubia of Aleph Farms, Ido Savir of SuperMeat, Roman Lauš of Mewery and Sebastian Rakers of Bluu will discuss production costs, approvals and market entry with moderator Jo Anne Shatkin of Vireo Advisors.

The sold-out exhibition will feature equipment manufacturers, ingredient suppliers, technology developers and specialist service companies. More than 50 startups are expected at the event, alongside larger food and manufacturing businesses.

“We’ve sold out the exhibition, which is fantastic, but what I’m particularly pleased about is the mix of companies we’re bringing together. We’ve got established technology suppliers, ingredient manufacturers and more than 50 startups attending, alongside some of the biggest names in food. That’s what we wanted to achieve with this event: getting the people developing new technologies in the same room as those who can help bring them into commercial production,” said Peter Mortimer, exhibition manager of The Future of Protein Production.

Visitor registration for the exhibition remains open and is free of charge. Conference tickets are sold separately and cover both conference stages. The two-day event also includes three workshops.