FoodTech Weekly #135 by Daniel S. Ruben

FoodTech Weekly #135

Hi there,

FoodBridge, the internal innovation and investments platform of the Axel Johnson Group, just launched a new report called 'A taste of FoodTech: Trends reshaping the food system'. I was interviewed for the section on the future of cheese. The report covers many exciting areas like NextGen foods, food waste, health & nutrition, and future food services, so make sure to check it out.

If you're in Sweden in mid-March, I'll moderate a roundtable at the Sifted Sessions in Stockholm on March 8, I'll give the opening keynote at Food Hack by Krinova in Kristianstad on March 13, and the next day I'll be on stage in Stockholm for a 1:1 fireside chat for the DI 2023 Future Food Forum.

After that healthy dose of narcissism, let's move on.

This week's rundown:

• Loam Bio of Australia brings home $73M Series B round to help boost plants' ability to sequester carbon

• Bibak of France scores €6M round for its reusable food container system solution

• Plant-based pet food brand Omni hits £400K crowdfunding goal in just minutes

Let's go!

Conversations

• Sat down with Petri-Jaan Lahtvee and Nemailla Bonturi, cofounders of ÄIO in Estonia. They both have a background in biotech; Petri-Jaan is a Professor, and Nemailla a Senior Researcher, at the Tallinn University of Technology. Says Petri-Jaan: 'I came back to Estonia to develop the biotech ecosystem. We have lots of relevant molecular biology resources, skilled researchers, and equipment here. And then Nemilla moved here from Brazil with her yeast that she'd been working on since 2011.' Nemilla adds jokingly: 'This strain is the longest relationship in my life.' In early 2022, they cofounded ÄIO. The company is e.g. producing healthy plant-based microbial oils as a B2B ingredient that can substitute more unsustainable options like coconut oil and palm oil, as well as e.g. fish oil and animal fats, from the food chain. In essence, ÄIO uses industrial sidestreams ('waste') from the food and wood industries, and brews fats and oils from that, using natural and precision fermentation processes. ÄIO just closed a €1M seed round led by Nordic FoodTech VC; the company is now submitting Novel Foods applications to EFSA for some of its innovations. 'We think we can start selling commercially in Europe by 2025, and in other markets of course', says Petri-Jaan. ÄIO is interested in piloting its ingredients with alt meat and dairy companies. Petri-Jaan and Nemailla can be reached via LinkedIn, here and here.

Noteworthy

• French startup Bibak has secured a €6M funding round (closed in November 2022 but announced now). The company, which was founded 5 years ago, provides a complete solution for the reusable food container ecosystem.

• Les Alchimistes, also from France, has landed a €10M round led by Amundi's Finance et Solidarité fund. The company turns food waste into compost, which is then sold to nearby farmers.

• Springwork Farm of the U.S. has harvested $22M in fresh funding from e.g. Blue Highway Capital and Farm Credit East. The company operates aquaponics greenhouses that combine fish farming and growing plants. The funding round will be used to build a fourth greenhouse, 120K sq. ft (12K sq. m) big, which will create 40 new jobs in Maine. Springworks will then produce around 5M heads of lettuce and 315K lbs (142K kgs) of tilapia annually.

• Moroccan/French AgTech startup Sand-to-Green has scooped up a $1M Seed round, led by Norwegian Katapult and BFA Global's pre-seed fund Catalyst. Sand-to-Green uses agroforestry to restore degraded land in Morocco for food production. Its drip irrigation systems are for example fed with water from solar-powered desalination plants.

• Loam Bio of Australia has raked in a $73M Series B round. The company sells seeds that are coated with a fungal inoculum before sowing. This boosts the plants' ability to store carbon in the soil. In essence, the fungi helps convert CO2 into a much stabler form of carbon that can be stored in the ground long-term.

• Omni Pet, which produces plant-based pet food, hit its £400K crowdfunding target within 15 mins of launching the campaign on Seedrs.

• U.S. scientists are developing healthier rice breeds, that e.g. contain resistant starch that can help prevent diabetes and reduce the risk of colorectal cancer.

• Quick read from WIRED on how CRISPR can help feed the world (e.g. enhanced-nutrition tomatoes already sold in Japan).

• Can cultured meat ever be more than a science experiment? Good piece in Neo.Life (h/t David R).

• The InsightTRAC Rover has won the Ag Robot Of The Year award. The autonomous rover can remove Navel Orangeworm infested nuts, so-called 'mummies', from almond orchards by shooting biodegradable, sustainable pellets at them (here's a 1 min video of the robot in action).

• Planting hedgerows, researchers have found, help farmers sequester carbon, manage pests, and provide habitat for pollinators and wildlife.

• Lidl in Germany has announced they plan to increase the proportion of plant-based options, while reducing the number of animal-based products in its offering.

• Five ways tech can help reduce food waste; nice quick primer from WEF with some neat visuals and videos.

• The history of fish sticks: Interesting article by Quartz Obsession.

• A fungus is threatening to wipe out the world's banana supply; scientists are now racing to find a solution, partly by using gene-editing.

News from the FoodTech Weekly community

• The Rockefeller Foundation (U.S.) is hiring a Manager, Regenerative Agriculture... Nutropy (France) is recruiting a Junior Food Scientist... Notpla (U.K.) is looking for a Head of Finance... Higher Steaks (U.K.) has an open role for a COO.

• Balderton has written a helpful guide on Board Meetings for early-stage CEOs.

• If you're an early-stage startup and would like to pitch to 100+ top climatetech and FoodTech investors, apply to pitch at the HackSummit.

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

Random Stuff

• This is a fascinating photo on massive yield improvements, of course, and the post also generated some good comments and discussions:

• How to design the optimal venture portfolio (theoretical model, so unsure how reliable it is).

• Thoughts and prayers to the grad student that had to rub spicy sauce on obese mice for 8 weeks:

• Forget about whether the U.S. or U.K. version of The Office is the best; the Saudi version is truly something else.

• A Mars Wrigley factory in the U.S. was fined after two workers went full Augustus Gloop. And speaking about chocolate, a U.K. man has been convicted of stealing 200,000 Cadbury Creme Eggs, in what British police British called an 'eggs-travagent theft.'

• After a gibbon monkey in a Japanese zoo mysteriously became pregnant despite living alone in her enclosure, zookeepers found out that the monkeys had a hidden 9mm (0.3 in) glory hole.

​I love you.

Daniel

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This issue was produced while listening to Take On Me (MTV Unplugged) by a-ha. 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, Improvin, IRRIOT, Juicy Marbles, Lupinta, NitroCapt, Oceanium, petgood, Rootically, Transship, VEAT, and Volta Greentech; in some of these startups, I have equity.

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