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FoodTech Weekly #101 by Daniel S. Ruben
News on FoodTech, food, and society
Daniel S. Ruben
June 03, 2022 • Estimated Reading Time: 11 minutes
FoodTech Weekly #101
Hi there,
Crazy week. The Stockholm+50 global environmental conference (with tons of VIPs), Stockholm Marathon, the Swedish Navy's 500th anniversary celebration, and Sweden FoodTech Big Meet 2022 all happened this week, causing major traffic issues including cancelled bus traffic in downtown Stockholm, so we've all been walking around in the pouring rain for a few days, feeling like the true clowns of this whole circus.
But it's been an exciting week! Countless food events ranging from tech to policy to innovation. Lots of smart people in town. Planned meetings, and unexpected, valuable encounters. Chances to reconnect with old friends. Evenings filled with gastronomy, cooking classes, and new experiences. And popped by for the launch of Europe's first soft-serve ice cream robot café, of Bonbot (here's their Instagram).
Tuesday I joined a panel for a seminar with the Director Generals of the Swedish public agencies for food, health, agriculture, and environment, to comment on a new landmark report (in Swedish, sorry) that's setting joint national goals to advance a better food system. I did my usual rant about why publicly-funded hospitals shouldn't have vending machines with candy and sugar-sweetened beverages. But maybe also said some words of wisdom.
Fun times for a policy wonk like me
Wednesday I spent at the Big Meet, moderating a stage during the afternoon, and eating my way through the startup booth section. Below chatting to an all-female, all-superstar group of investors (of Axel Johnson, Marta's Explorers, Kinnevik, and Sustainable Food Ventures), as well as Lauri Reuter of Nordic FoodTech VC, discussing his TV series 'Would You Eat This?'.
Getting to hang out with some role models
Also this week, my friends at Djuce Wines launched thei re-commerce shop for European customers. While the wines are premium, this is fundamentally a sustainability case; the wines comes in aluminum cans that have a 79% lower CO2 emissions footprint compared to glass bottles. Use FRIENDSOFDJUCE for a 15% discount at checkout.
This week's rundown:
Digital trackers are being added to Italian cheese to stop the fraudulent cheese trade
ReFED and Closed Loop Partners launch three new funds totalling $100M to fight food waste
Para español, oprima dos: The Spanish government will force companies to use human call center reps rather than machines
Let's go!
Conversations
New convo coming up next week :)
Noteworthy
Switch Bioworks has announced a $4.3M pre-seed round, led by Anthos Capital and Acre Venture Partners, and joined by e.g. Emerson Collective. The startup, which is based in San Carlos, California, develops sustainable nitrogen biofertilizer (by utilizing symbiotic microbes) to help farmers reduce their use of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer. Crop agnostic nitrogen fixing microbes is a super hot topic in agriculture. Other companies in the space worth watching include e.g. Kula Bio, Pivot Bio, Azotic Technologies, Sound Agriculture, Symborg, and Ginkgo Bioworks.
U.S. startup Joywell has banked $25M for its sugar alternative. The company uses a microbial fermentation process to recreate sweet proteins that are 2,000 to 5,500 times sweeter than sugar -- meaning less sugar is needed to create a sweet flavor. Others to watch in the sugar reduction space are e.g. DouxMatok, Amai Proteins, N!CK's, and Better Juice.
Image: Joywell
Italian cheesemakers have started to embed tiny, food-safe, digital trackers from digital tracking company p-Chip in the wheels of Parmigiano Reggiano. The innovation 'combines food-safe Casein labels with the p-Chip micro transponder, a blockchain crypto-anchor that creates a digital twin for physical items' The scannable food tag is smaller than a grain of salt. Authentic Parmigiano Reggiano sales amount to $2.4B while fraudulent cheese is estimated at $2.1B.
Solar Foods of Finland, which uses captured CO2, electricity, and microorganisms to create Solein, a protein powder, has received €15M in financing for their new Factory 01 (article in Danish). Here's a beautiful 3 min video on how Solar Foods create food out of thin air.
FarmWise of San Fransisco, California, which develops ag robots, has nabbed $45M in Series B funding, backed by e.g. Fall Line Capital, Middleland Capital, and Google Ventures.
ReFED and Closed Loop Partners are launching new three funds totalling $100M that will catalyze capital for food waste solutions. An $80M fund will be managed by Closed Loop to provide debt and equity; a separate $10M philanthropic fund (the ReFED Catalytic Grant Fund) will provide non-dilutive grants, and a final $10M innovation fund anchored by Google will test ways to help consumers waste less. According to Impact Alpha, last year investors deployed $2B into imperfect foods, cold chains, shelf-life extension, food rescue, markdown apps and other foodwaste tech companies. Still, upwards of $14B per year is needed to cut food waste by half by 2030 in the U.S. alone.
RobinFood, based in Bogotá, Colombia, has secured $32M in fresh funding to continue its expansion of making and delivering affordable homemade food. The company uses AI to forecast demand and reduce food waste, and focuses on low-income populations in countries like Colombia, Mexico, and Brazil. The round was led by Blue like an Orange, Palm Drive, and Minerva Capital.
Image: RobinFood
The California Department of Water Resources is using helicopter-based technology to scan the subsurface of the ground, to a depth of about 300m / 1000 ft. below the ground surface. This information helps inform how to use water in the state (fun fact: California produces 80% of the world's almonds, and almonds need 1.7 gallons / 6.4 liters of water to produce a singlealmond).
The world has passed peak agricultural land, meaning that while we produce more food than ever, the amount of land we're using is actually falling. This means we can increase biodiversity while feeding more people at the same time.
Gene-edited tomatoes could help provide more vitamin D for the 1B people worldwide currently not getting enough. But the path to market is full of obstacles, meaning this is many years away from making a difference on the ground. Regulations change, however. For example, after Brexit, the U.K. passed a law that allows gene-edited crops to be cultivated and sold commercially.
Swiss FoodTech community FoodHack (full disclosure: I'm an advisor to them) has raised $1M 'to become a new AngelList for climatetech' and FoodTech. FoodHack aims to empower anyone to invest from $1K to $100K in early-stage climatetech and FoodTech startups.
The startup your parents warned you about
Interesting op-ed from Seafood Source: 'It's time to stop subsidizing overfishing.' Seafood is the most globally traded animal protein, reaching a trade value of $164B, or 3.6x the size of the global beef trade, 5x the size of global pork trade, and 8x the size of the global poultry trade.
GFI and EIT Food have launched a €100K Cultivated Meat Challenge, searching for innovative approaches to reducing the cost of cell culture media (and thus bringing down the cost of cultivated meat).
A research team at Monash University in Australia have developed an autonomous harvest robot that can identify, pick, and and deposit apples in as little as seven seconds.
News from the FoodTech Weekly community
Revo Foods (Austria) is hiring a Food Product Developer... Djuce Wines (Sweden/Germany) is recruiting for several roles including Head of Global Sales and Head of Experience.
New Harvest, a non-profit research institute that supports open, public cultured meat research, is in financial trouble (it may run out of money within 6 months), and is inviting to an Emergency Town Hall on June 10. The company needs more funders, grants, and individual donors.
Nate Crosser wrote a really insightful and helpful article on the alt protein all stars.
Want to share some FoodTech news/project with other FoodTech Weekly subscribers? Hit reply.
Random Stuff
The Spanish government has introduced as new bill aimed at reducing wait times when calling customer service to 3 minutes, and forcing companies to have human service reps rather than machines.
Getting pricier (hat tip: Phillip S):
Fun must-watch video on eating automation (2 mins)
Meanwhile, in Texas:
I love you.
Daniel
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This issue was produced while listening to Beggin' by Måneskin. Follow me on LinkedIn and Twitter. And here's the Appetizer which I co-host. Did your brilliant friend forward this to you? Subscribe here.