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- FoodTech Weekly #100 by Daniel S. Ruben
FoodTech Weekly #100 by Daniel S. Ruben
News on FoodTech, food, and society
Daniel S. Ruben
May 27, 2022 • Estimated Reading Time: 12 minutes
FoodTech Weekly #100
Hi there,
Welcome to the 100th edition of FoodTech Weekly. This newsletter started out as an experiment. Two years and (almost) 3,000 subscribers later, I guess I'm still enjoying it. Am grateful for each and every one of you joining me for the ride.
Ate my way through a food fair / tradeshow in Stockholm this week (there were countless startups and legacy brands exhibiting), so I was essentially reenacting a microbe doubling in size every 20 minutes. At the fair, there were these cute little delivery / food serving robots from Wiibot cruising around, offering people candy (DaaS, diabetes-as-a-service). Felt very Wall-E.
Enough with the GIFs.
This week's rundown:
Regrow raises $38M Series B round to help agrifood actors such as farmers transition to regenerative agriculture
U.K. company Eider lands $63M to construct five large vertical farming facilities by 2024
Venture funding into FoodTech fell by over 40% in Q1, compared to the previous quarter
Let's go!
Conversations
Spoke to David Fogel, CCO at U.K. and Kenya-based AgTech marketplace / community startup Wefarm. David started out as an investor in the company, and a few years ago became its Chief Commercial Officer. Wefarm’s mission is to connect the world’s 500 million smallholder farmers so they can become more successful - by increasing their productivity and profitability. 'The platform exists to empower them, enabling them with a space to come together on a global scale - for the first time - to benefit from the size, knowledge, and buying power that their huge community represents. They're smart, savvy people, building profitable businesses however (so far) they have not benefited from technology and connectivity in the same way that many Western industries have', David says. Smallholder farmland (such as in Asia and Africa) is just 1/4 as productive as the same piece of land in Europe or North America and yet already produces 70% of the food in the world -- so there's a trillion dollar upside to this opportunity. Smallholder farmers typically can't do price comparison, nor easily access knowhow and inputs. Effectively, though they are business founders, they are treated as consumers in the market they operate in. Wefarm started out as an SMS service, where farmers helped each other succeed through knowledge sharing, eventually building a community of 3M users in Africa. The SMS service became one of the largest databases of smallholder agricultural knowledge, with over 37 million messages exchanged by users. Last year, Wefarm transitioned from the SMS service to a free app (for now available in Kenya only) which would unlock many more services, but this also meant the company had to start over building its community. Wefarm is now up to 130,000 members, and plans to hit 2M users by next year. 'At Wefarm, our members can contribute to and learn from their global community without being confined by physical proximity, for example how to handle a crop disease. They can also shop farm inputs - comparing prices, trusting the authenticity of the products - and access the markets', David explains, and continues: 'We process 9k orders per month, and will do 16k orders per month by June, taking a small commission from each transaction from the retail outlets - not the farmers.' Next up for Wefarm is to expand to other countries, and build credit scores for its users based on e.g. purchasing and payment history. This credit score will allow the Wefarm members to take out loans when necessary from different loan providers. The company is currently raising a $6M Seed round, and is looking for investors that get the mission and ambition -- as well as organizations that can help promote Wefarm amongst smallholder farmers. David can be reached via email and LinkedIn.
Image: WeFarm
Noteworthy
U.S. startup Regrow has bagged a $38M Series B round, which follows the company's $17M A round in September 2021. Regrow helps e.g. agrifood actors to measure and understand their GHG emissions, and model how adopting regenerative agriculture practices (such as low tilling, crop rotations, and the use of cover crops) would impact their emissions. The company also develops tools that allow e.g. farmers to implement regenerative ag practices, and keep track of emissions reductions and soil health. Recent studies have also found that soils managed according to regenerative agriculture practices contain higher levels of vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals.
U.K. FoodTech startup Foodsteps, which helps businesses to calculate, reduce, and label the environmental impact of their food, has raised $4.1M in Seed funding. Foodsteps' database holds data on e.g. the carbon footprint, pollution, land use and water use of over 1,000 ingredients. Traffic-light labels and QR codes then help consumers understand a product's sustainability profile. Food providers can also use the service to e.g. develop new recipes and menus with better sustainability credentials.
Image: Foodsteps
Birmingham, U.K. vertical farming company Eider has received £50M (appr. $63M) in financing from Slate Asset Management. The funding will be used by Eider to construct production five facilities by 2024, which will produce leafy greens.
U.K.-based Ag/Biotech startup Moa Technologies has banked £35M (appr. $44M) in Series B funding. The company tries to solve for herbicide resistance. Moa's technology, in short, can find new routes (modes of action, or MoAs) for herbicidal compounds to attack the weeds' cells, and thus kill the weeds. Recently, BASF Ventures and Orbio Ventures invested in Israeli biotech company FortePhest's Series B round; just like with Moa Technologies, FortePhest has developed new MoAs that inhibit the shoots and roots of weeds from growing, while not harming high-value crops like corn and wheat.
South African startup Nile has raised $5.1M; the company helps connect farmers to retailers who will buy their produce.
U.S. alternative protein company Eat Just says it has signed an agreement with process engineering company ABEC to build ten 250,000 liter bioreactors for meat cultivation ('the largest bioreactors ever built for bird or mammal cell culture), in a U.S. facility that will be able to produce up to 30M lbs (13M kgs) of meat a year.
Sea and Believe from Ireland, which develops plant-based seafood such as cod, has received commitments for half of a $3M funding round. Also in the plant-based seafood space, Austrian startup Revo Foods has secured €2.2M (appr. $2.4M) in public grants, mainly to help advance the company's 3D food printing technology and implement new tools to produce wholecut seafood made from plants.
Image: Sea and Believe / IndieBio
Mazen Animal Health of Iowa, U.S., announced a $11M Series A round. The company uses plants (e.g. corn) as molecular farms that produce protein ingredients for vaccines against diseases such as PEDV (Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea Virus, a deadly virus for newborn pigs). The vaccines can then be administered directly in the animal feed, which is safer, cheaper, and less labor-intense compared to injecting each animal individually
Venture funding for the FoodTech sector declined in Q1 to $6.9B in 359 deals, a contraction of 40.8% and 13.3% respectively vs. the previous quarter, according to Pitchbook (hat tip: M.K.).
Icelandic no-sugar brand GOOD GOOD, which develops and sells e.g. jams, spreads, bars, and natural sweeteners, has closed a $20M Series B round led by Icelandic private equity group SIA.
U.K.-based alt protein fund Synthesis has closed its first fund with over $300M in capital commitments. The firm was founded by Rosie Wardle and Costa Yiannoulis (both ex-CPT Capital) and Dr. David Welch (ex-GFI). The fund targets 15 investments with an average ticket size of $15M, and has already invested in e.g. Upside Foods, Perfect Day, and Redefine Meat.
Israeli FoodTech startup Yo! Egg is gearing up for a U.S. launch of its plant-based poached and sunny-side up eggs, following a $5M Seed round. And the products look pretty realistic.
Image: Yo! Egg
News from the FoodTech Weekly community
CellulaREvolution (UK) is hiring a Bioprocess Engineer... HackVentures / FoodHack (Switzerland) is recruiting a front-end developer... VEAT (Sweden) is on the lookout for a Head of Growth... Essential (US/remote) has an open position for a Chief Scientific Officer.
The UAE FoodTech Challenge is a USD $2 million competition presented by the UAE Ministry of Climate Change and Environment and Tamkeen, in association with ASPIRE. It is targeted to early-stage startups working in the tracks of Food Production and Food Loss & Waste. More info and application here (application deadline June 24).
Want to share some FoodTech news/project with other FoodTech Weekly subscribers? Hit reply.
Random Stuff
Bored? Type in a word or phrase here, and get clips from countless movies and TV shows where it's used.
What is FoodTech, and what makes a Foodtech company a startup? Helpful article by DigitalFoodLab.
Can't recall if I've already shared this text ('It's still Day 1 for Agtech'), but the second half of the text is worth a read.
Quartz just ran a nice piece on the history of food vending machines.
Those famous Omakase strawberries that used to cost $50 for eight large berries? With the opening of a new 74k sq. ft. (7,400 sq. m) new farm in New Jersey, the price has now been slashed to a paltry $20 for the same eight large berries.
I love you.
Daniel
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