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- FoodTech Weekly #152 by Daniel S. Ruben
FoodTech Weekly #152 by Daniel S. Ruben
News on FoodTech, food, and society
Daniel S. Ruben
June 16, 2023 • Estimated Reading Time: 12 minutes
FoodTech Weekly #152
Hi there,
History has a way of repeating itself; in the 19th century Luddites would destroy machinery, and now some Kenyans have torched tea plucking machines that threaten their jobs.
I sometimes think of the monologue by restaurant critic Anton Ego in Disney’s Ratatouille, where he says: ‘The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations. The new needs friends.’
There’s actually a lot of new creations to be grateful for, as Niko McCarty and Avadhoot Jadhav observe in Codon, listing 25 biotech breakthroughs to be excited about. For example, 40 years ago it took 8,000 lbs (3,600 kgs) of pancreas glands from 23,500 animals to make one pound (450 grams) of insulin, but now insulin is made by engineered bacteria.
This is why I love FoodTech, and writing FoodTech Weekly.
I’m a friend of the new.
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This week's rundown:
U.K. Winnow bags $10M for solution to cut hospitality kitchen food waste
German etepetete secures €1.8M in crowdfunding to rescue ugly fruits and vegetables and sell them to consumers
Aerofarms (vertical farming) and Meatless Farms (plant-based meat) both go bankrupt
Let's go!
Conversations
I spoke with Andy Clayton, CEO and Founder of Fermtech. An Oxford-trained biologist, Andy had a career in China before returning to the U.K. with a vision of setting up a biotech company, somehow tackling the climate crisis. Andy explains: ‘I remember one day I was in the car with my father, a history teacher. I was running business workshops for companies at the time, and had to take a call on loudspeaker. He listened patiently, but I could tell he found what I was doing meaningless. It was uncomfortable, because it echo-ed a voice in my head that I should be using my skills for positive impact. I set the objective to work on a problem that my mum and children could easily understand.’ Andy, who has been a vegetarian for 15 years, felt that intensive animal farming was a destructive activity, so he decided to apply his biology skillset to fix how we produce food. Fermtech was born. The company takes spent grain from breweries, and uses that as a substrate to grow microorganisms via something called Solid State Fermentation (which is different from submerged fermentation, where the microorganism goes in a tank with salt and glucose, and the broth is filtered out). And from those microorganisms, high-value things like enzymes and proteins can be extracted, e.g. to make a better vegan cheese, by enabling more creaminess, taste, and nutrition. ‘Food has to be nutritious, taste good, and be safe & affordable. We can achieve all of this’, Andy says and continues: ‘By 2030, we will have reduced 84M tons of CO2e, by reducing the U.K. dairy herd by 1%. It’s actually a lot.’ Fermtech is a B2B company. Before commercial sales can start in 2026, Fermtech wants to build a pilot plant (in 2024). The company received grants through Innovate U.K., was recently voted most innovative company in Oxford, and is currently raising a pre-seed round of £400k-£500k. Fermtech is looking for industry-focused investors, especially those that understand Solid-State Fermentation (could be breweries or those with capacity for solid state fermentation themselves). And Fermtech are looking for warm introductions in the food processing industry in the UK, to companies processing bread, potato, fruit, or confectioneries. Andy can be reached via LinkedIn and [email protected].
Dmitry Rogozhnikov, Ph.D and Andy Clayton, Fermtech
Noteworthy
U.K. startup Winnow, which develops solutions to cut food waste especially in hospitality (food service) kitchens, has closed a $10M Series C round, backed by e.g. ArcTern Ventures, Bridge Nine, Mustard Seed, Circularity Capital, Ingka Investments, and Novax.
Also in the U.K., cultivated meat startup Uncommon (previously known as Higher Steaks) bagged a $30M Series A round from investors like Lowercarbon, Balderton, Redalpine, East Alpha, Dismatrix, and Sam Altman (CEO of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI). Uncommon develops e.g. cultivated bacon and pork belly.
As a first, the USDA has approved the proposed labels of cultivated meat companies Upside Foods and Eat Just; the products will be labelled ‘cell-cultivated chicken’. Both companies have also recently received FDA approval, and now ‘just’ need to get USDA inspection approvals at their U.S. manufacturing facilities to start producing and selling to consumers.
Australian agtech startup Number 8 Bio has raised $1.2M in pre-seed; the company engineers yeast to produce bromoform (in whole biomass yeast form), which acts as a methane inhibitor when fed to cows. Others to watch in this space include e.g. DSM, Agolin, Mootral, CH4 Global, Symbrosia, Future Feed, Dulabio and Volta Greentech.
German startup etepetete, which rescues ugly organic fruits and vegetables and sells them via subscription boxes to consumers, has secured €1.8M (appr. $2M) in crowdfunding via Econeers.
French plant-based cheese brand Jay & Joy has raised €2M. The company, which was founded in 2014 and had expanded into several European countries, recently went into receivership due to a major product callback due to listeria contamination back in January. The company now has a new CEO, and hopes for a fresh start (h/t DigitalFoodLab). In somewhat related news, Sentient Ventures just invested £2M (appr. $2.5M) in dairy-free cheesemonger La Fauxmagerie, vegan pizza chain Purezza, and plant-based chicken brand Rebellyous.
U.K. plant-based meat startup Meatless Farms, which had raised $48M, has gone out of business.
Seattle, U.S. based carbon credit startup Nori, which runs a carbon removal marketplace and works with regenerative farms, has raked in $6.3M in fresh funding from investors such as Cargill, Toyota Ventures, and M13.
Between 11% and 30% of seafood products are illegal, unreported, or unregulated in the U.S., and governments and consumers are increasingly demanding more transparency and traceability in seafood. The Indonesian blockchain project Fishcoin pays fishers and aquafarmers cryptocurrency when they report data online at various stages of the seafood supply chain (5 min video).
Yield Lab Latam has received an investment from Nestlé to invest in Agtech and FoodTech startups; Yield Lab has raised more than $20M for its third fund.
Israeli AgTech startup Grace Breeding’s recent field trial in Brazil shows that its biofertilizer reduced synthetic nitrogen use in corn production by 50%.
News from the FoodTech Weekly community
CSIS (U.S.) is looking for a Senior Fellow, Water Security and Food Security… New School Foods (Canada) is hiring for a number of positions incl. Senior Manager, Finance… Blume Equity (U.K. / Netherlands) is recruiting a Principal and an Associate… ColdHubs (Nigeria) has an open role for a Sales and Marketing Manager… The André Hoffmann Fellowship Programme (Italy) in collaboration with the World Economic Forum has an open call for a Hoffmann Fellow, Data and Digital, Food & Water.
The Cartier Women’s Initiative annual international entrepreneurship program supports outstanding entrepreneurs leading early-stage businesses that are solving our world’s most pressing social and environmental challenges. Applications for the 2024 edition are open to impact entrepreneurs from around the world and are due by Friday June 30. More info here.
Want to share some FoodTech news/project with other FoodTech Weekly subscribers? Hit reply.
Random Stuff
Netflix will launch a pop-up restaurant in Los Angeles later this month, featuring chefs from various Netflix shows (h/t Marie Dollé)
Researchers at the University of Cambridge has trained a robot to observe and learn from cooking videos, and then recreate the dishes. The robot also developed a recipe of its own.
The quest to make a healthier donut (fun piece in WIRED UK).
It’s time for the annual Baby Jumping Colacho Festival in Castrillo de Murcia, Spain:
Celestebombin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Having lots of body hair makes it harder for mosquitoes to bite you, important research shows.
I love you.
Daniel
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This issue was produced while listening to Let Somebody Go - Kygo Remix by Coldplay, Selena Gomez, and Kygo. 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.