- FoodTech Weekly
- Posts
- FoodTech Weekly #126 by Daniel S. Ruben
FoodTech Weekly #126 by Daniel S. Ruben
News on FoodTech, food, and society
Daniel S. Ruben
December 09, 2022 • Estimated Reading Time: 11 minutes
FoodTech Weekly #126
Hi there,
Packed newsletter this week. As always, if you enjoy FoodTech Weekly, tell your friends to subscribe (and if you hate it, send it to your enemies).
This week's rundown:
Amai Proteins about to close $100M for zero-calorie protein 3,000x sweeter than sugar
Philippine farmers grow and harvest Golden Rice on a commercial scale for the first time
3Bee and BeeHero shows that funding for bee space is still buzzing
Let's go!
Conversations
Next week! 🙂
Noteworthy
Israeli FoodTech startup Amai Proteins is about to close a $100M funding round. The company has designed a zero-calorie protein that is up to 3,000x sweeter than sugar. The company hopes that its protein will help reduce sugar content by 40% to 70% in various product like ketchup.
DSM of the Netherlands will build a factory in Scotland, to increase production of Bovaer, DSM's methane-reducing feed additive for ruminants. The factory is slated to open in 2025 and will produce enough Bovaer to methane-reduce about 5M cows.
New research demonstrated that indulgent language helps promote sustainable food choices (for example, by changing 'Tomato Soup' to 'Provencal Slow-Roasted Herbal Tomato-Soup'). (Here's GFI's 19 best practices on marketing and promoting plant-based items on menus).
Black Sheep Foods from San Francisco has grabbed $12.3M in Series A funding led by Unovis and joined by Bessemer, AgFunder, and KBW Ventures. The company develops plant-based analogs to lamb meat products.
Petgood of Sweden, which develops and sells insect-based dog and cat food, announced a SEK 27.5M (€2.5M) funding round (full disclosure: I'm an advisor to Petgood). The round was led by Axel Johnson Group's new FoodTech initiative FoodBridge as well as existing owners including VC fund Course Corrected. The money will mainly be used for R&D and market expansion.
Pernilla Westergren (CEO/Founder) with Petgood ambassador Emma, from guide dog breeder Kustmarken
MALK Organics of Houston, Texas scored $9M in Series B funding for its clean label oat and almond milks.
For the first time ever, farmers in the Philippines have cultivated Golden Rice on a larger scale, harvesting almost 70 tons in October. Golden Rice has been genetically modified to contain beta-carotene, which the human body converts to vitamin A. This helps people (especially in Southeast Asia) meet their daily vitamin A needs, to e.g. avoid that children go blind. Scientists are now adding iron and zinc to the nutritional profile of Golden Rice.
Huber's Butchery in Singapore has become the first butchery in the world to sell cultivated meat. The products sold are made by GOOD Meat, the cultivated meat brand of Eat Just.
3Bee of Como, Italy landed €5M in Series A funding, led by AgFunder, Anya Capital, and ESA, to help beekeepers monitor the health of their hives. This reduces the need for treatments. The company will use the new funding to expand across Europe and increase from 1B in 2022 to 10B pollinators in 2023. In bee-related news, BeeHero of Israel raised a $42M Series B. The company runs a precision pollinator platform, which 100K acres of commercial crop under management.
According to Dealroom FoodTech, global FoodTech VC investment in November reached $932M, the lowest value in the last 2 years.
Source: Dealroom FoodTech
New research from the University of Portsmouth shows that the color of the bowl in which food is served also influences taste perception.
U.S. robotics-as-a-service Verdant has secured a massive $46.5M Series A round. The company's hardware attaches on the back of a tractor, and can then e.g. spray for weeds, fertilize, and treat plants for pests, will scanning the field and collecting data. Verdant will e.g. service around 40% of the U.S. carrot market over the next 5 years.
VC firm K2 Global has closed a new $300M fund that will invest in early-stage FoodTech, climatetech, and AI startups.
Norwegian supermarkets will have to sort all food and plastic waste in-store by January 1, 2023. Food waste campaigner Matt Homewood explains in more detail what this will mean. And speaking about supermarkets, Swedish grocery retailer ICA, with a 52% market share, announced it'll trial 'integrating' the vegan shelves and animal-sourced food shelves, to 'make it easy for more people to find and choose vegan products'.
More supermarket/sustainability stuff: French startup La Tournée bagged a $2M pre-seed round. The company offers customers zero-waste grocery deliveries. Products are provided in reusable containers that are collected during the next delivery. Meanwhile across the pond, R.Cup of Minneapolis nabbed $3.6M in funding; the company offers a reusable cup system for live event venues.
Image: r.Cup
News from the FoodTech Weekly community
WNWN Food Labs (U.K.) is hiring a Finance Director... Oceanium (U.K.) is recruiting a Project/Process Engineer... Imagindairy (Israel) is bringing on a Quality Assurance Manager... Better Dairy (U.K.) has a number of open roles... The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (Sweden) has posted a post-doc position for food system transformation.
The Earthshot Prize announced five winners, including Notpla, which will receive £1M. Notpla works to replace plastic packaging with edible seaweed-derived alternatives.
FoodShot Global also announced its 2022 winners of the GroundBreaker Prize in its three FoodShots; BioActive Foods, Precision Protein, and Innovating Soil 3.0. Dr. Ray Weil was awarded for his work to improve human nutrition by addressing low sulfur soils; Josh Trautwein of About Fresh was awarded for deploying e.g. the Fresh Connect debit card which increases access to healthy foods in low-income communities; and Dr. Kaiyi Guan of Habiterre was awarded for his work to support farmer decision-making to improve soil health.
Want to share some FoodTech news/project with other FoodTech Weekly subscribers? Hit reply.
Random Stuff
A beauty pageant for camels was held in Qatar on the sidelines of the World Cup. The top three camels all received $55K each. A similar pageant held last year in Saudi was plagued by scandal as over 40 camel contestants that had received botox treatments and other cosmetic procedures were banned.
TGI Fridays was sued by American woman Amy Joseph, after she purchased a bag of Mozzarella Stick Snacks that didn't contain any mozzarella cheese (but cheddar cheese).
These videos of trompe l'œil cakes are really mesmerizing.
Domesticated animals have smaller brains than their wild counterparts; this is called the 'domestication syndrome.' Scientists have now found that different breeds of cattle have different sized brains. Those breeds that interact with humans the most frequently (dairy cows) have the smallest brains.
Five Letter Foods of Finland kicked off its €600K Seed round, and has already received a €200K commitment from Business Finland. The grant is dedicated to research on cultivated reindeer meat. To illustrate this story, please find below a police raindeer in Finland (for some reason, all this raindeer and Finland talk reminds me of this Jim Gaffigan joke).
I love you.
Daniel
- - -
This issue was produced while listening to Step out into the Light by Matisyahu. 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.