FoodTech Weekly #175 by Daniel S. Ruben

FoodTech Weekly #175

Hi there,

Two days ago I did a keynote on reshaping our food system and how FoodTech can play a role in that transformation + I also joined a panel (summary here) on how AI impacts the food industry, at TONIC Summit in Helsinki, Finland. Great event, met lots of new and old friends, had tons of innovative food, was inspired.

I flew to Helsinki on the 06:20am flight (I had to get up at 04:30am which seemed like a great idea when I booked the ticket). More importantly, as always, I carbon offset my flights via Trine.

Trine makes it easy for folks like me to invest small (or big) amounts of money in solar energy projects in emerging markets, earning me a profit, decarbonizing the world, and making life a little easier for people like Nathalie, a restaurant owner in Kinshasa, Kongo.

Food is energy. And producing food takes energy. The food system accounts for at least 25% of global greenhouse gas emissions. We have to urgently decarbonize the food system. Renewable energy is part of the solution (there’s a $2 trillion annual investment need between now and 2030 to reach the 2050 Net Zero targets, and no, we’re not on track…)

This week I spoke with Sam Manaberi, the co-founder and CEO of Trine. One thing he said stuck with me: ‘When we’re done there is no such thing as impact finance — it’ll just be finance and evil finance.’

I’ve invested in projects on Trine for 5+ years; in that time I’ve provided 819 people with electricity and helped avoid 268 tons of CO2 (as a comparison, my return trip to Helsinki yesterday caused at least 0.3 tons of CO2).

I’d love to 10x my impact. And I’d love to help Trine reach break-even, which would only take a few thousand more retail investors. So — if you use this link, you’ll get €25 to invest, and so will I.

This week's rundown:

• Ripple Foods chugs down $49M in funding for plant-based milk

• Planet Farms harvests $40M for vertical farm in Italy

• Agriculture greenhouse gas emissions grew 14% 2000-2021, FAO says

Let's go!

Conversations

As mentioned above, I just had an interesting conversation with Sam Manaberi, the co-founder and CEO of Trine. Sam was born in Iran and grew up in Gothenburg, Sweden. He studied engineering and then spent eight years at Bosch, including a few years as Director North America for Bosch Solar Energy. ‘I knew I wanted to dedicate decades to drive the solar energy revolution. We’re going from a world where billions of people lack access to reliable, sustainable power, to a world where all have access, and renewables will be 50-60% of the energy mix in 2050. It ensures that everything else, like food, can be decarbonized’, Sam extols and continues: ‘Every single feature in the Western world is based on cheap access to reliable electricity. As emerging markets electrify, we have to make renewables more attractive than fossil fuels.’

Emerging markets currently emit about 2/3 of GHGs, and will need about $2 trillion annually by 2030 to reach the 2050 Net Zero Goal. The private sector will need to provide almost all of that capital, but few investors have experience in these markets and can price risks.

‘The solar energy technology exists and works, and the demand is huge. So the issue is really about enabling private financing. I felt that if I could just matchmake retail capital with high-quality, vetted energy deals, it’d help solve the problem’, Sam says.

Said and done, coming back from the U.S., he decided to launch Trine in 2015 as an investment platform focused on facilitating solar energy investments in emerging markets, to "make the world better, faster” (2 min video here). ‘When you’ve lived in Iran, the U.S., and even Germany, and you come to Sweden, you feel that everything in life has been de-risked, because the government pays for childcare, healthcare, education, all of it. So founding a startup is a no-brainer,’ Sam points out smiling.

After having proven that Trine could convene 10,000 retail investors and enable them to invest in solar energy in perceived high-risk markets like Africa, the company was ready to scale. ‘And then we hit a brick wall — when the pandemic erupted, we suddenly couldn’t travel to the emerging markets, meaning we couldn’t do proper due diligence and risk management on potential deals, so we no longer had dealflow for the 10,000 investors on our platform,’ Sam states.

The company survived the pandemic, and is growing again. Since its founding, Trine has facilitated €88M in financing for 42 solar energy companies with a 4-7% annual return to retail investors net defaults and fees. Perhaps more importantly, Trine has helped avoid 1M tons of CO2 and provided clean electricity for 3M people in 19 countries. ‘And this was all made possible by a little more than 10,000 retail investors — average Joes like you and me’, Sam says proudly.

So what’s next for Trine? Add a few thousand more retail investors to reach break-even. Then start scaling. Trine currently has 15 employees and consultants, ‘and we can 10x our impact for people, planet, and profit with about the same size team as today’, Sam notes.

Trine is currently raising a SEK 20M (appr. €1.75M) round, which is 50% committed. And Trine is eager to add more retail investors to use the platform (as a reminder, if you use this link both you and I get €25). Sam can be reached via LinkedIn and email.

Noteworthy

• California-based plant-based milk company Ripple Foods has completed a $49M funding round (mix of equity, debt, and securities), taking its total funding to $249M.

• Vertical farming operator Planet Farms of Milan, Italy has announced $40M in new funding at a $500M valuation from undisclosed investors. The company will complete a new growing facility outside of Milan (with a 20K sq. m / 215K sq. ft. growing surface) and plans to expand to the U.K. Planet Farms’ existing backers include Milan’s SACE, UniCredit Group, and Red Circle Investment.

• French startup Circul’Egg has bagged €5M to upcycle egg membranes and shells into e.g. petfood and nutraceuticals (h/t DigitalFoodLab).

• Helsinki, Finland-based startup Carbo Culture has harvested a €18M Series A round led by GenZero and True Ventures. The company builds biochar facilities that in essence can capture carbon by converting waste biomass into biochar using photosynthesis and store it. The biochar can be used e.g. in agriculture.

• Ryp Labs of Seattle, U.S. (formerly called StixFresh) has raised a $8.1M round led by King Philanthropies and backed by Good Investors, BCP Ventures, Argosy Foundation, and Ocean Born Foundation. The company places stickers containing natural compounds on fruits and vegetables such as e.g. apples, avocados, and mangos; when the compounds vaporize, they ‘cloak’ the fruit, protecting it from over-ripening, bacteria, and premature spoilage (h/t DigitalFoodLab).

• Berlin-based biotech startup Quazy Foods has snapped up a €800K pre-seed round led by ProVeg international, Antler, and Sprout & About Ventures. The company grows microalgae, developing functional ingredients for e.g. plant-based foods.

• Samudra Ocean has secured £150K from British Design Fund as part of its €800K pre-seed round. The company develops robotic monitoring solutions that allow seaweed farmers to predict their seaweed yield.

• Kibus Petcare of Barcelona, Spain has scooped up €1M in funding from investors including Easo Ventures. The company has developed an automated device that cooks food for dogs.

• Greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture grew 14% in the last 20 years, a recent FAO report says. Livestock accounted for about half of the increase.

• Some mixed food waste news:

  • Commercial buyers’ insistence of visually perfect produce causes 14M kgs (31M lbs.) of edible fruits and vegetables to be rejected in Australia alone, annually.

  • Food waste costs U.K. households £1,000 — appr. €1,150 — per year).

  • A group of U.S. government officials from 18 states has urged the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to phase out food waste disposal in landfills by 2040 to cut methane emissions.

  • Swedish food waste startup Deligate has launched ‘Ät snart’ (‘Eat Soon’) fridges in grocery chain COOP, where food items with short expiry dates are put and sold at an avg. 38% discount. As dynamic pricing is used, customers can sometimes find items at a 90% discount right before closing time.

• Nordic alternative protein investor Kale United is aiming to raise €1M in preparation of a 2025 IPO.

• Giving more attractive names to plant-based foods on restaurant menus (e.g. renaming ‘vegan burger’ to ‘juicy American burger’ significantly increases sales, a new study from the University of Queensland shows.

News from the FoodTech Weekly community

• Gourmey (France) is hiring for several roles… Perfat Technologies (Finland) is recruiting a Food Application Developer (Creative Chef)… Nutropy (France) is looking for a Chief of Staff.

• FoodShot Global is extending the $500K GroundBreaker Prize nomination deadline for their new FoodShot: ‘Water, the Essential Input.’ The new deadline is Jan 5, 2024. You can nominate e.g. a researcher, early-stage entrepreneur, or policy advocate whose work aligns with the FoodShot. More in AgFunder News.

• Vevolution is hosting an online pitch event, Pitch & Plant 2023, on Dec 7, 2023 at 11am EST (5pm CET), showcasing pioneering startups in the fields of alternative proteins, food technology, biotech solutions, and sustainable value chains.

Want to share some FoodTech news/project with other FoodTech Weekly subscribers? Hit reply.

Random Stuff

• Goldman Sachs forecasts battery pack prices to drop to $70/kWh by 2030. This is 20% lower than previous estimates. In somewhat related news, over 60% of Chile’s electricity came from renewable sources during the first 10 months of 2023.

• Artist (aptly called Faller) rakes fallen leaves into patterns:

• “Why we can’t stop watching terrible TikTok cooking videos.” (WaPo)

• Watermelon buses are a thing in Florida:

• If you’re in Idaho, you can stay in this potato Airbnb:

​I love you.
Daniel

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This issue was produced while listening to Big in Japan by Alphaville. Follow me on LinkedIn and Twitter. Did your brilliant friend forward this to you? Subscribe here.

Disclosures: I'm founder of Solvable Syndicate. I’m an operating advisor to VC/investment firms Nordic FoodTech VC, Mudcake, and Blume Equity. I'm a mentor at accelerators Katapult Ocean, Big Idea Ventures, and Norrsken Accelerator. I'm an advisor to BIOMILQ, FoodHack, Hooked, Ignitia, Improvin, IRRIOT, Juicy Marbles, Lupinta, NitroCapt, Oceanium, petgood, Rootically, Stockeld Dreamery, Transship, VEAT, and Volta Greentech; in some of these startups, I have equity.

Boring disclaimer: The newsletter content is intended only to provide general and preliminary information to folks interested in FoodTech, and shall not be construed as the basis for any investment decision or strategy. I assume no liability in regards to any investment, divestment, or retention decision taken by readers of this newsletter content.