FoodTech Weekly #15 by Daniel S. Ruben

FoodTech Weekly #15

Hi there,

Lot's of heated feelings re. my cotton candy grape recommendation last week. Turns out people both love them and hate them. I sense a new cilantro/coriander conflict breeding.

I was recently interviewed by Analisa Winther's Nordic FoodTech Podcast, covering topics like food system visions, the state of the Nordic FoodTech ecosystem, and COVID-19 impacts on the food system. You can listen to the conversation on the website, as well on Spotify and iTunes/Apple Podcasts (and watch a recording on her Instagram). Analisa will soon be launching a coaching program for entrepreneurial leaders; if you use the code FOODTECHWEEKLY in the referral box as you sign up, you get 2 free coaching sessions.

Speaking about recordings, yesterday I was on the Warp News Show, talking to the host Mathias Sundin (former Member of Parliament for Sweden) about how innovation and technology will change the way we produce, distribute, and consume foods.Warp News works to balance the negative bias in mainstream media by publishing fact-based, optimistic news from all over the world, highlighting news that gets us closer to a positive future. Subscribe to their free weekly newsletter here.

On Sept 30 - Oct 1, Sweden FoodTech will host their Sweden FoodTech Big Meet, for the fourth year running. There'll be some pretty awesome speakers and inspirators - e.g. chef Marcus Samuelsson, Nadia El Hadery of Yfood, Dr. Masatoshi Funabashi of Sony Computer Science Labs, and Anna König Jerlmyr, Mayor of Stockholm, just to mention a few. I will moderate one of the sessions. The event is fully online, and registration is free, so sign up today.

Enough about me -- and on to the interesting stuff!

Highlights

• Conversations: David Zilber & Joel Larsson

• Noteworthy: Farm robots to the rescue in the U.K.; the world's largest rooftop greenhouse farm opens in Canada; Finland's Solar Foods closes an €18.5M round.

• The Profile: Fredrika Gullfot (Simris Alg)

• Random Stuff: A tiny robot powered by alcohol; facial recognition software for pigs and cattle; cotton will soon be on the menu.

Conversations​

• Some of you may know of David Zilber, some of you may not. But when a good friend asked if I'd be available to meet with David, I think I had a similar experience as Tim Urban of Wait But Why, when Elon Musk reached out to ask if he could meet:

(All pics from Wait But Why)

• Toronto-born David Zilber is a chef, a photographer, a model, and an author (and with the name David Chaim Jacob Zilber, he once won the award for most Jewish name on a tour bus full of teenagers in Israel). But what he is most known for is running the Noma Fermentation Lab since 2016 -- essentially leading the R&D work for culinary innovations at Noma in Copenhagen, named 'best restaurant in the world' several times since 2010. New York Magazine called him 'One of the Food World's Most Pioneering Figures.' (If you want to get to know him better, read this, this, this, and this). David worked at Noma from 2014 until the summer of 2020. I had to the opportunity to sit down and speak with him over coffee (that I don't drink) this week. David is physically and mentally recharging after six fantastic years at Noma - that also included intense, extreme pressure and stress. Working in the #1 restaurant in the world means a tough work environment, almost like competing in the Olympics to deliver a superior experience for the guests, every. single. day. David and I discussed how many parts of the food system are broken. How soils are depleted; how farms go bankrupt as consumers spend less than ever on food; how subsidies for corn, meat, and dairy are creating perverse outcomes. How the food system heavily relies on a finite resource, fossil fuel, to produce high yields. And that burning these fuels may bring the climate back to a much warmer one not experienced for millions of years; one that is incompatible with the human way of life. That it can all feel overwhelming. But that we know that there are solutions. How regenerative farming can restore soils. How True Cost Accounting (pricing in externalities into food) can create better results. How food needs to cost more, for various reasons. How teaching people how to cook whole foods again, in homes and schools, can create better health outcomes and a stronger connection to the food that connects us all. David is excited to have started a new chapter in his life - where he's meeting new people, exploring things, and enjoying his beloved Copenhagen. He's currently writing on a new book and is thinking about what to do next. I asked him if he had a message for the readers of FoodTech Weekly. He said: Eat more cabbage - it's great for you! 

• I also had a chance to catch up with Joel Larsson of Pale Blue Dot. Named after the famous Carl Sagan quote, Pale Blue Dot is a climate-focused VC with a €53M (and growing) war chest. The fund has already made a couple of investments, including UK-based Phytoform (which breeds resilient crops) and Stockholm-based Veat (which offers 100% plant-based foods in vending machines). The fund will mainly do seed-stage investments, although it'll do some pre-seed as well, with ticket sizes ranging from $200K-2M, into up to 40 startups. Given that the food system causes 25% of total greenhouse gas emissions, it's not surprising to see climate investors increasingly turning to the food space, to drive change. Together with Heidi Lindvall and Hampus Jakobsson, the three partners started Pale Blue Dot to invest in startups that reduce, reverse, and help us adapt to climate change. Before starting Pale Blue Dot, Joel built an accelerator and microfund together with Heidi where they invested in 30+ startups, and Hampus had made over 80+ angel investments and had worked for Blueyard as a venture partner.  And given that these three persons are some of the smartest folks around, I'm excited to see the impact they'll be having. If you're a European startup in e.g. food/ag, industry, fashion/apparel, energy, and transportation that is having a positive climate impact, and you're looking to raise seed, you can get in touch with the Pale Blue Dot team via their website.

Noteworthy​

• A consortium of 100+ U.K. fruit and vegetable growers are backing a new initiative to advance automation and robotics in the (labor-intensive) picking and packing. The U.K. needs 70,000 people annually to pick and pack produce, and growers are heavily reliant on seasonal workers from abroad (the U.K. attempted to recruit a Land Army to cover for the absent foreign workers during COVID-19). One example mentioned is British Dogtooth, which operates robots that can pick and grade ripe fruits, placing them directly into plastic punnets (boxes) that consumers can buy at the grocery store.

• Lufa Farms has opened the world's largest rooftop greenhouse farm, in Montreal, Canada. The farm, which will grow e.g. tomatoes and eggplants, is 15,000 sq. m (160,000 sq. ft.), or about the size of three football fields. The company is able to feed 2% of Montreal with its own farms, and its partner farms. Fully automated, the greenhouse has a water system that collects and reuses rainwater, which leads to savings of up to 90% competed to a traditional farm.
  

  

  Image source: Lufa Farms CC BY.

• Beijing plant-based meat startup Vesta Food Lab has successfully raised$2.3M, which will be used for R&D as well as the building of a new production facility. Swiss FoodTech startup Planted, founded just last year, has launcheda plant-based kebab skewer, using just pea protein, pea fibers, water, and rapeseed oil. The company has previously launched plant-based chicken and pulled pork products, and has raised about €5M to date. Climax Foods of Berkeley, CA, which wants to reverse-engineer animal foods and rebuild them using plants, has closed a $7.5M Seed round. Japanese IntegriCulture has been awarded $2.2M from the Japanese Ministry of Economy, to build a commercial production site for cell ag (cultured) meat projects; this follows a $7.4M Series A raise by IntegriCulture earlier this year.

• Syngenta Ventures and BASF are among the backers for a new $50M venture fund, SP Ventures, which will do AgTech and FoodTech investments in Latin America. The fund will do Seed and Series A-stage deal, with check sizes ranging from $100K to $6M.

• Solar Foods of Finland has successfully closed an extended €18.5M Series A round. The company air-captures CO2, and together with electricity, it produces a nutrient-rich protein, Solein. Yes, it is pretty mind-blowing. The company hopes to use the protein as an ingredient in products ranging from e.g. bread, pasta, yogurts, but also in alternative meat products. Solars Foods plans to commercialize its novel protein by Q4 2022. Here's a lovely little 3-minute video on how Solar Foods produces its protein, narrated by Dr. Juha-Pekka Pitkänen, CTO and Co-Founder of Solar Foods.

• Netherlands-based Triodos Organic Growth Fund has invested €9.2M into Swiss online food market Farmy. Founded in 2014, Farmy sources food directly from producers and uses a fleet of electric vehicles to deliver the food to end-consumers. The company offers over 12,500 mainly organic products from more than 1,000 producers, and logged sales of €10.6M in the first half of 2020, making it the third-largest online food shop in Switzerland.

• Swedish startup CarbonCloud, which helps food brands calculate their carbon footprints, has raised a €1M Seed round, led by Maki.vc of Finland and TS Venture of Germany. CarbonCloud has customers like Oatly, Naturli Foods, Sproud, and Nude.

• Nordic FoodTech VC, the first dedicated FoodTech fund in the Nordics, has made its first investment, by joining in the €1.9M Seed round of Chromologics. The company has created a fermentation-based biotech platform that uses fungus to produce sustainable food colorants (instead of extracting the colorant from plants or animals). Its flagship colorant, ChromoRed, is a natural red, which is vegan, kosher, and halal.

The Profile

• Fredrika Gullfot was an analyst at the Swedish National Defense Radio Establishment for 6+ years. She then spent almost a decade as a consultant and expert translator, before deciding to pursue a Ph.D. And it was when Fredrika was studying for a Ph.D. in Biotechnology at KTH The Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, that she became interested in microalgae. She felt the opportunities were limitless, to use algae for new, environmentally friendly production processes and better products. After her dissertation, Fredrika decided to start Simris Alg in 2011. The first consumer products were launched in Sweden in 2015; the omega-3 line was launched in the U.S. in 2019. It's a supplement that contains ALA, EPA, and DHA (all the healthy stuff). Since 2016, Simris Alg is listed on Nasdaq in Stockholm, and while the company still isn't profitable, sales have recently started to increase, driven by the U.S. expansion. Fredrika has received numerous awards, including the 2017 Swedish Food Award, WIRED Innovation Fellow 2015, PR Rookie of the Year 2016, and many more. And the journey with Simris has only just begun.

Random Stuff

• If you don't know what vertical indoor farming is, this quick-read article gives a great intro to this nascent industry and the leading startups.

• This resonated with me: A teeny tiny robot powered by alcohol.

• A Chinese company, Beijing Unitrace Tech, has developed facial recognition software for pigs, sheep, and cows. It enables the tracking and documentation of animal behavior, such as drinking and eating habits, while also keeping tabs on their health. According to Zhao Jinshi, founder of Beijing Unitrace Tech, the software solution works best for cows, because 'pigs all look the same.'

• Would you eat cotton? Cotton contains a bitter-tasting toxin, Gossypol. It's a natural defense mechanism against insects and microbial disease, but it also ensures that monogastric species like pigs, chickens, fish, and humans can't eat it -- only cows can. In a scientific breakthrough, Texas A&M scientists have managed to remove Gossypol. While cottonseed is currently fed to cows, the researchers believe that their breakthrough will enable hundreds of millions of people to consume cottonseed in the future. Long, but fascinating read, here.

• This hit close to home:
  

  

​I love you.
Daniel
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Disclosures: I'm a consultant to the Rockefeller Foundation Food Team. I'm a mentor at accelerators Katapult Ocean, Big Idea Ventures, and Bloomer. I'm an advisor to Noquo Foods, BIOMILQ, Volta Greentech, Veat, IRRIOT, Rootically, Holistal, Vultus, and Ignitia; in some of these startups, I have equity. 

Boring disclaimer: The newsletter content is intended only to provide general and preliminary information to folks interested in FoodTech, and shall not be construed as the basis for any investment decision or strategy. I assume no liability as regards to any investment, divestment, or retention decision taken by readers of this newsletter content.