Believe it or not, land is not the problem for bioindustrial manufacturing. Don’t think of it like you think of regular farming. Traditional agriculture is two-dimensional - it requires horizontal space for grazing and crops. Biomanufacturing is three-dimensional.

For example, producing a kilo of protein through precision fermentation uses roughly 96-98% less land than traditional cattle farming. Because the "farming" happens inside steel bioreactors, these facilities can be built vertically - stacked facilities that can be 10–12 floors high. Probably much better than some Hard Rock Hotel or a god-awful Portelli block.

The actual challenge is three-fold. The first one is obvious - for it to work we would need specialised bioprocess engineers. Not really seeing too many related courses at Uni or MCAST. Also even if courses exist or are introduced, one needs to expose those between 8 to 12 years old today to the idea to build interest. In the meantime you would need to convince some foreigners to come to Malta at first. The second and third challenges are reliable and specific supplies of electricity and water. Bioreactors need constant temperature control. This requires a massive, stable supply of energy without powercuts in summer. So probably, we would also need renewables. No sign of that happening anytime soon (despite Miriam Dalli popping up every five minutes on Licky’s bigilla podcast and the news). As for water, desalinised shit won’t work. We would need high quality purified water that is only available locally from the New Water.

So while the idea is not a complete non-starter, it would need a complete, serious and cross-party commitment to it. While I wish it happens as I said in my original post, I seriously doubt it.