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FoodTech Weekly #179 by Daniel S. Ruben
News on FoodTech, food, and society
Daniel S. Ruben
January 12, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 15 minutes
FoodTech Weekly #179
Hi there,
It’s great to be back. A big welcome to the 92 new subscribers who have signed up since my last newsletter in late December. FYI, today’s edition is a little longer than usual because it’s the first in several weeks, so don’t be shocked.
My New Year’s resolution is to procrastinate less.
I’ll start working on that tomorrow.
This week's rundown:
Perfect Day harvest $90M pre-Series E; founders step down
Finnish startup Enifer scores €12M gov’t grant for mycoprotein scaling
Aldi U.K. sets 2030 goal of 90% food waste reduction
Let's go!
Conversations
Chatted with Riccardo Bottiroli of Foreverland right before the holidays. Riccardo is a food scientist Ph.D. who worked on research and applications in the food world for 6-7 years; after graduating from Wageningen University, he dedicated his life to the future of food. After years as an R&D consultant and sone exploration, he realized how chocolate and cocoa were actually causing significant problems, so he found some co-founders in Giuseppe D'Alessandro, Massimo Brochetta, and Massimo Sabatini and went on a new journey in 2022, with Foreverland Food.
‘Cacao is not sustainable’, Riccardo explains and continues: ‘To produce 1 kg of chocolate, we need 24,000 liters of water. So it’s the most water-intensive crop. Most of the cocoa comes from Ivory Coast and Ghana, and 45% of African deforestation is due to cacao production. So it’s also a huge problem in terms of GHGs. In addition, 1.5M children are exploited in cocoa plantations.’
Riccardo also mentions how climate change will make 80% of current cocoa production regions unsuitable for cultivation by 2050.
Foreverland’s solution to these problems is to produce chocolate using carob, a neglected, allergen free crop that’s widely grown in the Mediterranean countries. ‘For many years it was known as poor man’s chocolate, but it’s better from a CO2, water, and CSR perspective’, Riccardo says.
The food industry currently discards 90% of the carob — the pulp, sending it to animal feed. Foreverland insteads upcycles it into a chocolate substitute they call FREECAO, working with fermentation to make its flavor close to cocoa. The startup has also developed their own blend of fat, to replace cocoa butter.
Foreverland will be a B2B ingredient supplier of cocoa free chocolate, selling it as a powder, liquid, or drops to FMCG/CPG manufacturers wishing to produce confectionary products. The company has 9 team members, and they’re busy developing e.g. a dark chocolate, a Nutella-like product, and a peanut butter-like product, all allergen-free. This year, Foreverland will set up the production and sales of small batches, build a demo plant in south Italy to scale production, and run some trials with big industrial players.
The company, which has previously raised €200K from e.g. Eatable Adventures, is in the midst of raising their Seed round.
Foreverland is looking for investors for its Seed round. The company will also hire a Head of Sales and Senior Process Engineer soon. And Foreverland is eager to build relations with more partners interested in helping to commercialize their products in Europe. Riccardo can be reached via LinkedIn.
Riccardo / Foreverland
Noteworthy
Some news from precision-fermented dairy land:
California precision fermentation pioneer Perfect Day has announced a $90M pre-Series E; the two co-founders Ryan Pandya and Perumal Gandhi will also step down from their leadership roles after 10 years.
In France, biotech startup Standing Ovation has bagged €3M in grant and loan funding from Bpifrance and the French government, to scale up production of casein produced using precision fermentation.
And Israeli industry peer Imagindairy has received FDA approval for its animal-free milk protein.
Nasekomo (HQ’ed close to Sofia, Bulgaria) has closed an €8M (appr. $8.8M) Series A round; the company produces Black Soldier Fly larvae which are converted into e.g. animal feed. I interviewed Nasekomo’s co-founder Xavier Marcenac in #141 of FoodTech Weekly.
The Japanese government has awarded $19.6M in grants to local plant-based egg startup Umami United and cell ag company IntegriCulture, according to a Green Queen report.
FA Bio of the U.K. has scored £5.3M (appr. €6.1M) to leverage microbes into e.g. biostimulants, biocontrols, and biofertilizers, that the company hopes can cut the use of conventional chemical inputs in agriculture. The round was co-led by Clean Growth Fund and Pymwymic, and joined by Ship2B Ventures.
Finnish biotech startup Enifer has secured €12M (appr. $13M) in grants for a factory where it’ll produce a mycoprotein called PEKILO (the world’s first commercial mycoprotein, produced in Finland from the 1970s onwards as animal feed). Here’s how the production process works. (And if you want to dig into the growing Finnish FoodTech ecosystem, here’s a brand new report).
Image: Enifer
Czech/Hungarian startup Munch has fetched a Series A round (sum undisclosed) led by Piton Capital and joined by FJ Labs, Christopher Muhr, Kai Hansen, and existing investors. Munch enables foodservice actors like restaurants, bakeries, hotels, and grocery stores to sell surplus food at a discount to consumers, to help cut food waste.
A program at Wageningen University and Research in the Netherlands, which aims to breed cattle with reduced methane emissions, has received a $5M grant from the Bezos Earth Fund, the Global Methane Hub, and Wageningen University Fund. In related news, methane-reducing feed additive Bovaer from Dutch-Swiss corporation dsm-firmenich has won U.K. regulatory approval.
Researchers from the University of Florida and the University of Rhode Island are conducting trials using laser scarecrows to deter birds from damaging field crops like sweet corn. Pew, pew.
Some FoodTech/AgTech predictions for 2024 from Matthieu of DigitalFoodLab, from Shayna of Supply Change Capital, and from Andrea of Tech x NonTech. Apparently, camel milk is a hot trend too.
A fresh study shows that about 75% of industrial fishing vessels, and up to 30% of transport and energy vessels, are not tracked through conventional reporting means. This hampers e.g. global conservation efforts.
Image: Global Fishing Watch
Some Nordic alt protein news:
Oatlaws of Sweden, which makes oat protein shakes and other vegan products, has raised SEK 10.6M (appr. $1M) at a SEK 29.8M (appr. $2.9M) valuation.
Sproud of Sweden, which sells plant-based dairy products, has clinched SEK 15M (appr. $1.45M) in fresh funding from undisclosed investors.
Tempty Foods of Copenhagen, Denmark, which produces alt meat based on mycoprotein, has raised pre-seed funding from local angel investors.
In 2017, food retail chain Aldi UK set a food waste reduction goal of 50% by 2030. They surpassed it almost eight years early. Now Aldi is setting a new target — to reduce food waste by 90% by 2030, saying that this helps provide high quality, affordable food to customers.
Spanish alt protein company RIP Foods has announced it will close. R.I.P…
Turkish AgTech startup Agrovisio has raised €260K at a €4M valuation from ag machinery manufacturer TürkTraktör. Agrovision provides satellite-based decision-making services for farmers.
Vorkoster (roughly translated to ‘taster’ / ‘guinea pig’) is a smart lid designed by Berlin-based Kimia Amir-Moazami, that uses a PH-sensitive film to detect if a food product such as meat or fish has gone bad. The film gradually changes color as the food product inside the container begins to spoil (which is detected by the ammonia gas released by the food). This makes it easy to see whether the food is still edible, which helps to reduce food waste.
Image: Frangipani Beatt
News from the FoodTech Weekly community
Innoscentia (Sweden) is hiring a Senior Formulation Chemist… Blume Equity (U.K./The Netherlands) is recruiting an Analyst… Planet A Foods (Germany) is on the hunt for a Business Development Manager… HackGroup is looking for an Account Executive… GFI Israel (Israel) has an open position for a Sustainability & Food Security Manager.
Jules Achard is looking for a Co-Founder, Product (& Tech) for a Regen AgTech startup. JD here.
Stockeld Dreamery is subletting some of its (modern and super nice) office and lab space in Stockholm, Sweden so if you need to expand, here’s your chance.
Norrsken Accelerator (where I’m a mentor) is open for applications. $125K upfront investment, no program fees, access to unicorn mentors, a global network, top investors and more. Some AgTech/FoodTech alumni startups of the Accelerator include Nilus, Emata, Complete Farmer, Your Beet, Holo, Xilinat, and Green-On.
EIC Accelerator has a challenge dedicated to precision fermentation. Info sessions on Jan 15 and again on Jan 16.
Congrats to Samia Qader who has launched Climate Tech 360, a podcast focused on (you guessed it) climatetech. The first few episodes are centered around how to finance hardtech startups in climate.
And congrats to Bodil Sidén, Paul Archambeau, and the entire team of Kost Capital who just announced its first close of their new €25M fund which will invest in “food powered by the bioeconomy”. Kost Capital has already made its first investments, in Äio, Numi, and Nutrumami.
Bodil Sidén, Kost Capital
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Random Stuff
100 Positive News from 2023.
And more of the same, also from Gapminder:
Most countries in the Americas now have warning labels on unhealthy foods:
Source: Food Politics / Marion Nestle
Miniature cows are a thing (cuteness overload).
During the holidays, Burger King offered facial recognition software to show users how bad hangovers they had, and then used AI to generate customized offers including discounts. (Sometimes I think we live in ‘Black Mirror’).
Over time, productivity gains have made food cheaper:
Willis Gibson, a 13-year old boy, became the first person (since Tetris was released over thirty years ago) to beat the game. His reaction is priceless.
I love you.
Daniel
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This issue was produced while listening to One Of The Girls - Slowed by The Weeknd, JENNIE, and Lily-Rose Depp. Follow me on LinkedIn and Twitter. Did your brilliant friend forward this to you? Subscribe here.