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FoodTech Weekly #121 by Daniel S. Ruben
News on FoodTech, food, and society
Daniel S. Ruben
November 04, 2022 • Estimated Reading Time: 10 minutes
FoodTech Weekly #121
Hi there,
Greetings from Tel Aviv (flight emissions offset via Trine — here's €10 if you want to try it out). Due to COVID, it's been a few years since my last visit, and it's great to be back - Tel Aviv is a fantastic city. The juxtaposition of old and new, the Bauhaus architecture, the vibe, the scents, the food, the nightlife, the beaches, the tech ecosystem, the diversity, the many neighborhoods to discover — it's really a special place. The constant 25C (77F) weather in early November doesn't hurt either.
I'm here for FoodTechIL (plus some well-deserved vacay) and will report back on that conference, plus perhaps some side events and meetings, next week (FoodTech Weekly Premium subscribers might get a deeper dive). Israel is a powerhouse in global food and ag innovation, so being here for FoodTechIL feels special. More than anything, I look forward to meeting other people (in person!) from the global FoodTech ecosystem.
Tel Aviv
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This section in last week's FoodFix caught my attention:
’Purdy thinks the cell-cultured/cultivated industry is primed for consolidation as the sector shifts from buzzy media hype toward a quieter chapter of figuring out approvals, and – most importantly – how to execute. Globally, there are about 120 companies in the space, and this technological quest has proven to be really, really expensive. “I think we’ve kind of hit the ceiling of how many can exist based on the funding,” Purdy said.“There are no more announcements coming out about B2C companies,” he added. “Upside Foods, JUST, Aleph Farms, Finless Foods, BlueNalu, these places that have had a little bit of a head start on everyone. They have all the money. The venture capitalists have picked their racehorses and there are no new species or products to announce that are really going to capture someone’s attention.”
I think this analysis can also be extended to some other alternative protein, and foodtech/agtech, verticals.
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The results are in from last week's poll re. pineapple on pizza:
🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ Yummy! (28.6%)
🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️ I can live with it (34.7%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Nope. (36.7%)
So there you have it. Comments ranged from 'Just wrong' and 'Please, just no' to 'Best pizza topping'. I'll side with Arman Anatürk's reflection: 'Look, pineapple is great. Pizza is great. Pizza pineapple - just not for me.'
This week's rundown:
Breakthrough Energy Ventures and others partner up to help decarbonize rice cultivation
U.S. retailer Tesco links executive bonuses to cutting food waste
Saga Robotics of Norway score €9.7M round to improve strawberry and grapevine production using ag robots
Let's go!
Conversations
Have a little patience, more convos are coming up!
Noteworthy
U.S. indoor-farming company Local Bounti has harvested $23.3M in new funding. The company runs several facilities around the U.S. growing leafy greens and salads, and will use the injection of fresh capital to increase crop output and unit economics.
DeHaat, which provides Indian smallholder farmers with access to key inputs, markets, and financing, has banked a $46M Series E round.
French startup Neoplants has unveiled a houseplant called Neo P1, which has been bioengineered to counteract environmental damage. It captures air pollutants, and only requires watering twice a month (h/t ClimateHack Weekly).
Breakthrough Energy Ventures, which is backed by e.g. Bill Gates, will join forces with Temasek, Wavemaker Impact, and GenZero to help decarbonize rice cultivation, a major source of methane emissions. The plans include founding a startup that will develop viable strategies to combat these emissions (h/t ClimateHack Weekly).
Israeli sugar-reduction FoodTech startup Better Juice is launching its first commercial-scale manufacturing plant, capable of producing up to 250M liters of juice per year, according to statement shared with FoodTech Weekly. The company develops sugar-reducing immobilized enzymes, that naturally convert a juice's fruit sugars such as sucrose, glucose, and fructose into prebiotic and other non-digestible fibers. Better Juice, which partners with juice companies wanting to reduce sugar loads, says it can reduce up to 80% of the simple sugar content in fruit juices and fruit-based condiments, without any degradation of e.g. vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants.
Better Juice / Janet Erlich
A new survey from Israeli cultivated meat startup SuperMeat found that 86% of American chefs would be interested in serving cultivated meat to consumers. About the same percentage of chefs would consider replacing conventional meat with cultivated meats on their menus, if pricing were similar.
Luxembourg-based VC fund Satgana is aiming to raise $30M to invest in among other things European and African food and agriculture startups, at the pre-seed and Seed stages.
U.K. supermarket chain Tesco has linked executive bonuses to cutting food waste, aiming to reduce food waste by half in 2025. The U.K. throws away 9.5M tons of food each year, worth roughly £19B. About half of food wasted is perfectly edible. A recent Eurostat report said that EU households wasted 154 lbs (70 kgs) of food per person in 2020. Household waste is responsible for 55% of total food waste in the EU.
Dealroom says that global FoodTech VC investment in October was down 31% year-on-year.
Dutch VC Navus Ventures has invested SEK 2.4M (€0.22M) in Swedish publicly listed ag robotics startup Ekobot. The company develops autonomous field robots for mechanical weed control, and will use the new funding to further commercialize. In related news, Norwegian agtech startup Saga Robotics has raised €9.7M; the company develops ag robots for strawberry and grapevine farms, and have deployed robots in five countries. Investors in the round included Aker, Nysnø Climate Investment, the Rabo Food & Agri Innovation Fund, and Hatteland.
Ekobot
News from the FoodTech Weekly community
Gelatex (Estonia) is looking for a part-time lab assistant.
Want to share some FoodTech news/project with other FoodTech Weekly subscribers? Hit reply.
Random Stuff
The world's best cheese for 2022 has been revealed (h/t Phillip S).
How food powers your body -- fascinating long-read from The New Yorker.
According to a new study published in the Animal Behavior journal, bumblebees like to play just as much as the rest of us. Researchers apparently observed the bees enjoying spinning around on tiny balls, without having received instruction or having any incentive to do so. The scientists say that the insect minds may be far more sophisticated than we have imagined thus far.
This close-up photo of an ant's face gave me nightmares, and now it will do the same to you.
Halloween squirrel feeder (7 sec video) - and here's a bonus squirrel video:
I love you.
Daniel
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This issue was produced while listening to תל אביב (Tel Aviv) by Omer Adam. 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.