FoodTech Weekly #119 by Daniel S. Ruben

FoodTech Weekly #119

Hi there,

If you're in Stockholm on Oct 26, don't miss out on the first-ever FoodHack meetup taking place in the city, at Norrsken House. Sign up here. There may be food from Chouchou, Stockeld Dreamery and Raging Pig...

Speaking about FoodHack, they're running a survey where Founders can list their favorite FoodTech/ClimateTech investors. If you're a founder in this space, make sure to fill it out.

This week's rundown:

• Hoxton Farms bags $22M investment for its cultivated animal fat, which will help improve plant-based alternatives to meat

• French ag robotics startup Sabi Agri was just fois gras'd with €8M in fresh funding

• Danone ditches its Russian dairy business, taking billion euro loss

Let's go!

Conversations

• Spoke with Alexander Olesen, CEO and co-founder of Babylon Micro-Farms, an indoor farming service that enables businesses and communities a reliable and convenient supply of fresh, sustainable produce. The company started out as a social entrepreneurship project at the University of Virginia in the U.S. This eventually led to Babylon, which bootstrapped its way before taking off. 'We wanted to create a remote management platform, so we miniaturized and automated the farming modules', Alexander says. Babylon develops turnkey farms and then provides a service to run the actual farms, for customers like e.g. IKEA, Aramark, Compass, Sodexo, as well as regional healthcare providers. So far, Babylon has installed 130 units, with another 60 units back ordered. 'It's fresh, sustainable produce', Alexander explains, and continues: 'We offer 40 varieties of leafy greens, micro greens, specialty crops, etc, that are more nutrient dense than other products.' Today, the company has 37 employees, is on track to become profitable within the next 9 months, and is eyeing international expansion. Babylon has brought in $12M in financing so far, and is currently raising a Series A round. The company is looking for institutional investors, and also FoodTech focused investors, as it doesn't have those on the cap table yet. Babylon is also looking for people interested in helping with the international expansion. Alexander can be reached via LinkedIn.

Noteworthy

• U.K. startup Hoxton Farms, which produces animal fats that are added to plant-based alternatives (to meat) to make them more realistic, has raised a $22M Series A round, led by Collaborative Fund.

• Liberation Labs, based in Texas, U.S., has secured $20M in Seed funding from investors such as Agronomics, Siddhi Capital, and CPT Capital. The business model of Liberation Labs is to build out precision fermentation capacity to enable high-volume production of proteins such as dairy and egg, for other companies in the industry.

• Israeli AgTech company Grace Breeding, which develops nitrogen fixation tech, says it can reduce grain yields by 18% while reducing the need for synthetic fertilizer.

• AgriWebb of Australia clinched a $6.8M investment to help ranchers and farmers digitize their livestock management, and help them transition towards regenerative agriculture practices.

• Helsinki, Finland based dogfood subscription service Alvar Pet has grabbed €600K in Seed funding (h/t: DigitalFoodLab).

• Swedish vertical and indoor farming company Agtira has bagged 20M SEK ($1.8M) in new funding.

• Stellar Pizza in California raked in $16.5M in a round led by Jay-Z's VC firm Marcy Venture Partners. The company develops automated robotic pizza trucks that can make up to 420 pizzas (before needing a refill) and can deliver directly to customers.

• People in the U.K. draw 50% of their calories from ultra-processed foods.

• Danone is ditching its Russian dairy business, resulting in a potential €1 billion write-off.

• French ag robotics startup Sabi Agri has banked €8M in new funding, to help accelerate growth, and boost production of their next-gen collaborative robots (h/t DigitalFoodLab).

• BioPrime Agrisolutions of India has closed a $1.1M round, to develop inexpensive biotech-based products to make crops climate resilient.

• Peelo, a sustainable packaging startup based in Slovakia, raised a pre-seed round from Rockstart and CB Investment Management. The company develops beeswax food packaging, which is natural, reusable, washable, and produces zero waste. The packaging helps cut down on food waste in a sustainable way. (Sifted by the way recently wrote a nice piece on startups taking plastics out of the pet sector).

• Crisp of the Netherlands snapped up €75M in new funding for its grocery delivery platform that connects local farmers with households. The company also announced the acquisition of a local supplier of ready-made meals, Eetfabriek.

• Another Dutch startup, Northern Wonder, recently launched what it called is the world's first coffee made without coffee beans (it's instead made from lupin beans, chickpeas, and blackcurrants). The company goal is to stop deforestation caused by the coffee industry.

News from the FoodTech Weekly community

• Melt&Marble (Sweden) is hiring for e.g. a Food Scientist, Research Associate, and Research Scientist... Nordic Umami Company (Finland) is recruiting a Chief Operating Officer... Fermify (Austria) is looking for a Bioprocess Engineer... Shiru (U.S.) is on the lookout for a Chief of Staff... Wildtype (U.S.) is fishing for a Head of Food Science.

• Tickets for the 2022 Nordic-U.S. Food Summit (taking place in the SF Bay Area on Nov 3-4, 2022) are out.

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

Random Stuff

• A mother-daughter duo at a California bakery spent a month making a 2m / 6 ft recreation of Han Solo frozen in carbonite, made entirely of bread (calling it 'Pan Solo').

• The annual French stretchy cheese competition is in full swing, reaching 5+ meters (16+ ft) of stretch.

• The Gilpin Family Whiskey (a single malt whiskey) was developed by processing urine from older diabetic patients.

• BatDog (10 sec video, watch it, sound on).

• Manual tomato harvesters with some sick skills (video, 14 secs)

• A man tasked with preserving Japan's cultural heritage accidently smashed his car into the country's oldest toilet (500+ years old).

​I love you.

Daniel

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This issue was produced while listening to Poland by Duwap Kaine. 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.

Disclosures: I'm Head of Strategy and Special Projects at Stockeld Dreamery. I'm an operating advisor to VC/investment firms Nordic FoodTech VC, Trellis Road, and Blume Equity. I'm a mentor at accelerators Katapult Ocean, Big Idea Ventures, and Norrsken Impact Accelerator. I'm an advisor to BIOMILQ, FoodHack, Hooked, Ignitia, IRRIOT, Juicy Marbles, Lupinta, Oceanium, petgood, Rootically, Skira, Urban Oasis, VEAT, and Volta Greentech; in some of these startups, I have equity.

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