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FoodTech Weekly #106 by Daniel S. Ruben
News on FoodTech, food, and society
Daniel S. Ruben
July 08, 2022 • Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes
FoodTech Weekly #106
Hi there,
It's summer, and the newsletter is getting shorter. I'll hopefully take a break for a few weeks, to recharge but also save up some good stories to share. So FoodTech Weekly will be back in late July or so.
This week's rundown:
Avant Meats of Hong Kong reels in $10.8M investment for its cell-cultivated seafood
Tropic Biosciences scores $35M to use gene editing to improve crops like banana, rice, and coffee
France bans meat-like terms for alternative protein products made in France (but if you move your factory across the border to e.g. Belgium or the Netherlands and export your products back to France, you're all good).
Let's go!
Conversations
Will be back after the summer :)
Noteworthy
Tropic Biosciences of the U.K. has landed $35M in new funding, in a round led by Blue Horizon. Tropic uses gene editing to improve the performance of crops in tropical regions, starting with banana, rice, and coffee, e.g. making them more disease resistant.
French startup Hors Normes has bagged $7M, backed by Project A and Stride VC. Hors Normes buys rejected inventory of e.g. fruits and vegetables, and then sells the produce to consumers at up to a 40% discount. The company says it has saved 400 tons of produce since starting operations two years ago.
Hong Kong-based cell-cultivated seafood producer Avant Meats has raised$10.8M in Series A funding, led by S2G Ventures, and backed by Particle X, Lever VC, Artesian, Thia Ventures, CPT Capital, and the Good Protein Fund.
Image Credit: CC-BY Avant Meats Fish Maw
U.S. agtech startup Fyto has secured $15M in fresh funding led by GV(Google Ventures); the company grows duckweed (lemna) in automated growing ponds. The duckweed can then be used as animal feed, as an ingredient in plant-based foods, as biofertilizer, and as a soil amendment. Initially, Fyto aims to grow duckweed as feed for dairy cows.
Israeli biotech startup Maolac has raised a $3.2M Seed round led by OurCrowd; the company extracts human-breast milk like proteins from bovine colostrum, a nutrient-rich fluid that cows produce from their udder in the first few days after giving birth. Maolac will use the new funding to build a small-scale production facility. The company hopes to develop products to help the elderly, as well as athletes, pets, and humans (to prevent severe cases of gut inflammation).
Micropep Technologies of France has clinched €8.5M in Series A funding, led by Supernova Invest. Micropep develops peptide-based biological products to combat weeds and plant diseases.
Farmers in the Netherlands are staging mass protests against government pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. The Dutch government has mandated reductions of 70-95% in nitrogen oxide and ammonia emissions to stay within emissions targets. Farmers say they'll drastically have to reduce their livestock populations.
Not easily distractored
U.S. startup Wisy has developed an AI platform that uses image recognition to detect what products in a supermarket are out of stock or running low, as well as those that are available but haven't yet been put on display.
Matthew Glover, co-founder of Veganuary, VFC, and Veg Capital, has announced a new £30M (appr. $36M) early-stage alt protein fund called Sentient Ventures. The fund will invest pound;2.5M into startups that remove animals from the food supply chain.
NASA harvest researchers are using satellite data combined with economic data to track and understand how Russia's invasion of Ukraine may disrupt the global food system; interesting read.
Image: NASA
Australia has approved field trials of genetically modified sorghum, by the University of Queensland. The GM sorghum contains an introduced gene that is expected to allow the crop to undergo fertilization without pollen; one of several steps required for ase*ual seed production.
France has banned plant-based meat alternatives to carry names associated with meat products such as sausage, nuggets, or steak. The regulation only applies to products made in France, creating a nice incentive for entrepreneurs to move their production elsewhere (or as Matthieu Vincent of DigitalFoodLab observes, 'a beautiful example of self-destruction applied to your own innovation ecosystem').
A restaurant in Switzerland which serves an all-you-can-eat buffet for 20 CHF (about the same in USD or EUR) has started to fine customers who don't finish their food. The owner, Salman Ghauri, grew up in India and wanted to remind people that food is precious and shouldn't be thrown away.
News from the FoodTech Weekly community
HackVentures (remote/Switzerland) is hiring an Accountant...Grönska(Sweden) is recruiting a Hardware Design Engineer...GFI Europe (remote/Europe) is looking for a Research and Grants Manager... SuperMeat (Israel) is on the lookout for a Media Development Scientist.
Marina Schmidt just released the latest episode of Red to Green podcast; this one focusing on margarine! Why was margarine pink in New Hampshire 200 years ago? Why was margarine made illegal in many U.S. states? Tune in for an interesting 15 minute episode -- available where you find your podcasts.
Want to share some FoodTech news/project with other FoodTech Weekly subscribers? Hit reply.
Random Stuff
Canada is introducing front-of-package nutrition labeling, for products high in one (or more) of sodium, sugars, and saturated fats. It'll look something like this:
Noted by Tamar Haspel: The U.S. corn used for ethanol could supply 100% of all Americans's caloric needs. If food wasn't used for fuel, it could feed a whole lot of people.
The Eiffel Tower in Paris has issues with rust and needs repairs, but instead of structural fixes, the tower will receive a €60M paint job.
Speaking about France, the Tour the France winner will burn an equivalent amount of energy to roughly 210 Big Macs (as racers need to eat 3-4x as many calories as a person does normally).
I don't even drink coffee. But I want this. I need this:
I love you.
Daniel
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This issue was produced while listening to Running Up That Hill by Kate Bush. 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.