Galicia To Invest €805 Million In Biotechnology, Including Alternative Proteins

Galicia has announced an €805 million (USD $899 million) investment in biotechnology, including alternative proteins, over the next five years.

The new biotechnology strategy will run from 2026 to 2030, and the Galician government said it “is expected to make the definitive leap in scientific excellence, competitiveness, escalation and projection.”

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Galicia is an autonomous community in Spain. The Xunta de Galicia, the region’s government, announced the biotechnology strategy in June. The €805 million total includes €572 million in public investment and €233 million in private capital.

The plan focuses on “four complementary sub-sectors,” including marine resources and the “blue economy”; health and pharmaceuticals; bioeconomy, the environment, and forest sustainability; and agri-food and foodtech. Cultivated meat and other alternative proteins are particular areas of biotechnology that will receive support.

Last year, Hijos de Rivera, Inproteins, and the Xunta de Galicia invested €7.5 million to establish Galicia’s first dedicated plant-based protein plant in Teixeiro-Curtis. The facility is expected to begin operations by the end of 2026.

Román Rodríguez González, the Regional Minister for Education, Science, Universities, and Vocational Training of the Xunta de Galicia, said, “Galicia does not aspire merely to be a place where biotechnology is researched. It aims to be a place where biotechnology is created, scaled, financed, internationalised and translated into real-world impact.”

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Artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and alternative proteins

Galicia’s five-year biotechnology plan will combine biotechnology with artificial intelligence (AI) and health data. Earlier this year, an study by researchers at the University of Stanford developed a generative AI tool to create better burgers.

“For centuries, food design has been a matter of intuition, experience, and trial and error,” the study’s lead author said. “We are beginning to show that AI can transform food design into a quantitative science with applications in other important fields.” 

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