This article originally appeared on San Francisco Business Times.
The East Bay’s booming biotech market is making room for another life sciences upstart to revolutionize a nascent industry.
Animal-free dairy maker Perfect Day signed a sublease for 112,000 square feet in Wareham Development’s Aquatic Park Center from Aduro Biotech, an immunotherapy company focused on cancer that merged with Canada-based Chinook Therapeutics last year.
The sublease at 740 Heinz Ave. in Berkeley more than quadrupled the company’s previous space in Emeryville and gave the startup a Class A research facility to grow into as it boosts its operations.
Perfect Day occupied the first 60,000 square feet in 2020, an additional 37,000 square feet this year and will move into a third chunk of space in 2022. The Cresa-brokered sublease runs through 2029. Rent starts at $5.25 a square foot per month, with a total rent obligation of $70.8 million for the life of the sublease.
Prefect Day develops animal-free fermented dairy-like products such as ice cream, cheese and yogurt. To manufacture its products, the startup takes dairy flora and bacteria and feeds it plant sugar to make protein, which it then uses as an ingredient. The idea, according to Perfect Day is to make products with “less energy, less water, less greenhouse gas emissions,” and without the use of factory farms.
The alternative dairy maker received FDA approval for its products last April, and it raised a Series C funding of $300 million in July, giving it significant capital resources to accelerate its growth.
The Details
▪ Address: 740 Heinz Ave., Berkeley
▪ Size: 112,000 square feet
▪ Landlord: Aduro Biotech
▪ Tenant: Perfect Day
▪ Broker: Cresa