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- FoodTech Weekly #153 by Daniel S. Ruben
FoodTech Weekly #153 by Daniel S. Ruben
News on FoodTech, food, and society
Daniel S. Ruben
June 23, 2023 • Estimated Reading Time: 14 minutes
FoodTech Weekly #153
Hi there,
A new report from SISTA and BCG shows that all-female founding teams receive less than 5% of funding. Looking at the 217 funding rounds over €50M in 2022, only two rounds involved all-female teams.
Another survey just released by DocSend revealed that all-female teams raised 36% less than all-male teams, that all-female teams with minority members raised the least amount of funding, and that diverse teams raised 33% less than all-white teams. For example, while it took all-female teams (with no minority members) 53 meetings to raise $1.2M, it took all-male teams (with no minority members) just 49 meetings to raise $1.6M.
I could go on. This looks pretty much the same year after year in the startup tech sector. I haven’t seen any data for the FoodTech sector specifically, but I guess it’d look similar.
How can we be satisfied with this situation? How can investors be satisfied with this situation?
Do we need to start our own VC fund to fix this? It’s frankly embarrassing.
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This week's rundown:
The USDA gives final approval for cultivated meat companies to start produce and sell in the U.S., in historic decision
Hyfé bags $9M to turn sugary wastewater into feedstock for biomanufacturing
Why Polish bus 666 will no longer go to Hel
Let's go!
Conversations
Sat down with Gali Fried of Vanilla Vida when she visited Stockholm recently for Sweden FoodTech Big Meet.
People all over the world love vanilla, and thousands of products with vanilla flavors are launched in Europe alone each year. Vanilla is a dominant ingredient in both food and fragrances; ‘It's an issue of chemistry. The vanillin molecule that is in charge of the main vanilla notes, is also dominant in breastmilk, so people are conditioned to love it from an early age’ Gali explains. But the supply chain is vulnerable, as Madagascar grows approx. 70% of the world’s vanilla supply — the volumes, quality, and prices are very volatile. ‘There are natural disasters like cyclones and climate change having an impact. But since vanilla is a high-value crop, thefts are prevalent, so often farmers are forced to harvest their vanilla prematurely to protect themselves, meaning the plant hasn’t reached its' full aroma potential’, Gali says. To mitigate the challenges with vanilla, most food and fragrance companies therefore rely on synthetic vanillin or natural vanillin.
Vanilla Vida was founded in Israel to solve for stable supply and top quality, by Shlomy Kadosh, Oren Zilberman, and Raz Krizevski, Ph.D. The company, which has 23 employees and has raised $18M thus far, grows vanilla in climate-controlled greenhouses; currently in Israel, soon in Africa, and from 2024 also in North America. Vanilla Vida can cut the conventional growing time of 4.5 years in half, while maximizing the glucovanillin content.
‘Outdoor grown vanilla only blooms for 24 hours, and you need to pollinate by hand. We can trigger blooming all year long. We have 20x the yield per square meter compared to traditional methods’, Gali notes. Post harvesting, Vanilla Vida cures the vanilla for a few months using different patented methods, to give customers vanilla beans with very different characteristics, e.g. sweet, smoky, floral etc. Customers can choose to pay per gram of vanillin, which both reduces their risks and gets them a competitive price.
This year, Vanilla Vida will sell 4 tons of vanilla, but the company will quickly ramp up to 40 tons, selling to e.g. distributors and flavor houses in Europe and the U.S. Vanilla Vida is interested in talking to more flavor houses. The company is also looking for a Nordic distributor working with foodservice locations that have many locations, as well as to speak with ingredient companies that support ice cream manufacturers. And Vanilla Vida always loves to get feedback from top culinary chefs. Gali can be reached via [email protected].
Images: Assaf Karela / Vanilla Vida (plus the snapshot of Gali Fried I took, bottom right)
Noteworthy
Just days after California-based cultivated meat startups Eat Just and UPSIDE Foods received USDA label approval, the USDA has now also greenlit both companies for commercial sale. This historic decision, which makes the U.S. the second market to approve cultivated meat sales after Singapore, follows the FDA approval last year. The approvals mean that these companies can begin production, and sell their products to consumers. Expect to see them launch cultivated chicken products with celebrity chefs in premium restaurants later this year (UPSIDE is running an online competition if you’d like to be one of the first to try their product).
Omeat from Los Angeles has emerged from stealth with $40M in funding, backed by e.g. S2G Ventures, Google Ventures, and Tyson Ventures. The company has developed a way to produce growth factors (needed for cultivated meat production) which is cheaper and more ethical than using fetal bovine serum (FBS).
Hyfé of Chicago which upcycles nutrients from food processing sugary wastewater into feedstock for e.g. biomanufacturing, has landed a $9M Seed round led by Synthesis Capital.
The Israel Innovation Authority has announced it will invest NIS 50M (appr. $14M) in a precision fermentation facility providing R&D and production services to local and foreign FoodTech companies, and has selected YDLabs to lead the facility’s construction.
Shanghai, China biotech company CellX has banked $6.5M in Series A+ funding to complete its pilot facility and begin producing cultivated meat products.
Image: CellX
U.K. broccoli upcycling startup Upp has scored a £800K ($1M) U.K. government grant. The company uses machine learning and 3D cameras to harvest broccoli crops with minimal waste. It also upcycles any broccoli harvest waste into sustainable proteins.
More from the U.K.: Adamo Foods, which produces meat-free steaks from mycelium, has secured £1.5M in pre-seed funding from SFC Capital and a grant from Innovate UK.
Also in the U.K., kitchen robotics startup Karakuri, which has developed a sushi-serving robotic arm as well as an automated French fries fryer (and a robotic food kiosk that could assemble various ingredients into prepared meals), will likely close down after failing to secure more funding (the company has previously raised a total of £13.5M).
AgFunder released their first-ever Latin America AgriFoodTech report.
Climax Foods of Berkeley, California says it has debuted the world’s first plant-based ingredient to truly mimic dairy casein in terms of functionality, flavor, texture, melt, and stretch. Industry peer New Culture recently launched a pizza using casein produced using precision fermentation.
Image: Climax Foods
Finnish insect producer Volare is now selling insect-based feed to egg-laying hens, in a first for Finland.
Why is it so difficult to predict the future of agriculture? Good blog post by Elliot Grant of Mineral.
And here’s a really great article by Saron Berhane on the AgTech and FoodTech landscape in Africa, from the funding situation and opportunities, to the startups to watch.
…aaand here’s a good piece on how restaurants can work with choice architecture (nudging) rather than bans, to get their guests to eat more plant-based.
A new study has found that mycorrhizal fungi store the equivalent of about 36% of yearly global fossil fuel emissions, and could become an important solution to reaching Net Zero.
A root tuber colonized by an arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus. Image: Scivit, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
News from the FoodTech Weekly community
Klim (Germany) is recruiting a Senior Product Manager… MUMilk (France) has several open roles incl. Senior Cell Scientist… Nosh Bio (Germany) is hiring a Quality & Food Safety Manager… Generation Waste (Sweden) is looking for a Sales Executive… Nium (U.K.) is on the hunt for a Development Scientist… GFI Israel (Israel) has a few open positions incl. for that of Business Development Manager.
Startup Norway is looking for investor perspectives on the Nordic HealthTech sector and startups, to understand barriers and opportunities for the local ecosystem. All investor opinions are welcome - take the survey here.
Sweden’s innovation agency Vinnova will open a new grant program in September for Swedish, Israeli, and Swiss FoodTech startups, with an emphasis on alternative proteins.
Want to share some FoodTech news/project with other FoodTech Weekly subscribers? Hit reply.
Random Stuff
Local Polish bus operator PKS Gdynia has announced it will no longer run bus 666 to the northern seaside town of Hel after some Christian groups have complained; the bus line will be renamed 669 on June 24. This reminds me of Finnair’s flight 666 which flew to HEL (Helsinki) until 2017.
How salt farmers are adjusting to climate change (h/t Marie Dollé).
In a new ruling, the Supreme Court of Denmark has upended a law from 1833 and 1854 which stated that no foreign flags could be raised in Denmark. The ruling came after a Danish man was convicted in 2022 of hoisting the U.S. flag (the Stars and Stripes) on his own flag pole.
Birds playing basketball (27 sec video):
The southern Swedish city of Malmo has introduced ‘Buttcoin’, where people are awarded 800 Buttcoins to dispose of cigarette butts in special ashtrays, which allows folks the opportunity to win prizes.
Chinese social media users are recreating ‘báirén fàn’ or ‘white people food’ to make fun of Western packed lunches with boring ingredients such as white bread sandwiches with sliced meats. Comments range from that this is to ‘learn what it feels like to be dead’, to ‘it’s so lawless and outrageous’.
Flight travelers have started wearing fishing vests on planes, stuffing their clothes in there to avoid baggage fees for carry-on luggage. Says Patrick Berry, the president and CEO of Fly Fishers International to the Wall Street Journal: ‘No self-respecting fly-fisherman or woman wants to get caught by their friends wearing a fly-fishing vest in a public space where there’s no fish to be caught. […] You would look like a giant dork.’
I love you.
Daniel
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This issue was produced while listening to The Times They Are A-Changin’ by Keb’ Mo’. 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.