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- FoodTech Weekly #158 by Daniel S. Ruben
FoodTech Weekly #158 by Daniel S. Ruben
News on FoodTech, food, and society
Daniel S. Ruben
July 28, 2023 • Estimated Reading Time: 10 minutes
FoodTech Weekly #158
Hi there,
Next week I’ll take some time off, so FoodTech Weekly will be back again on Aug 11.
This week's rundown:
Brevel scoops up $18.5M for algae-based ingredient used in alternative protein products
CubicAcres and Johannas score funding for indoor farming, while industry peers AppHarvest and Square Roots struggle
Why penguin eggs look translucent when cooked
Let's go!
Conversations
Stay tuned for August 🙂
Noteworthy
U.S. high-tech indoor farm company AppHarvest, which had raised over $500M in funding, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. In related news, Square Roots (which was founded by Tobias Peggs and Kimbal Musk, brother of Elon, back in 2016) has paused commercial operations at its 4 farms, and laid off most of its staff.
Swedish indoor circular farm startup Johannas has received a SEK 8.8M ($0.85M) grant from Sweden’s innovation agency Vinnova, to construct an automated, circular food production facility in Morgongåva, Sweden, going operational in mid-2024. (Note: I visited, and interviewed, Johannas for FoodTech Weekly #149).
Long Island, New York vertical farming startup CubicAcres has raised a $3.7M funding round to construct a fully automated vertical farming facility capable of producing one million heads of lettuce annually.
Oshi and the Better Meat Co have been awarded a $1M grant from the BIRD Foundation to develop mycoprotein-based salmon fillets.
Israeli algae-based ingredient startup Brevel has scored a $18.5M Seed round, led by NevaTeam Partners and joined by e.g. the European Union’s EIC Fund. The round also included non-dilutive grants from e.g. the EU’s Horizon 2020 program and Israel’s Innovation Authority. Brevel’s ingredient is a neutral-tasting complete protein that can be used by alt protein companies; the first products featuring Brevel’s ingredient are dairy-free cheeses from Vgarden, expected to launch in 2024.
Image: Brevel
Rice Robotics of Hong Kong, which develops robots for outdoor and indoor delivery as well as for security and disinfection, has scored $7M in pre-Series A funding. Also in China, Shenzhen robotics company Botinkit secured $13M in Series A funding to automate and standardize cooking for chain restaurants.
A proposed bill in California aims to cut food waste by reforming the confusing standard phrases for expiration dates such as ‘sell by’ ‘best before’, ‘enjoy by’ and so on, and replace them with either ‘best if used by’ (in reference to freshness) or ‘use by’ (in reference to food safety).
Big Idea Ventures (full disclosure: I’m a mentor there) has announced its first New Protein Fund II investments, including e.g. Future Cow, the first cell ag startup using precision fermentation in Brazil, and PFx Biotech of Portugal, which develops a platform for large-scale production of bioactive human milk proteins. So far, Big Idea Ventures has made 110+ investments in 30 countries.
Supply Change Capital announced a $40M fund, which will invest in tech and consumer companies in the food space. Prime Movers Lab also raised $245M for a new early-stage fund that will include in several sectors including agriculture.
Agrovoltaics means combining renewable energy with farmland, and it’s becoming increasingly popular. Grazing animals keep the grasses around solar arrays low, while improving the land’s environmental health (7 min video, CBS News. H/t: GreenBiz).
Image: Solar Farm cc-by-sa/2.0 - © Peter McDermott - http://geograph.org.uk/p/6190020
News from the FoodTech Weekly community
Fermify (Austria) is recruiting a Director of R&D as well as a Downstream Process Engineer… New Culture (U.S.) is hiring a Senior Food Scientist… Mosa Meat (Netherlands) is looking for a Lab Technician… NitroFix (Israel) has an open position for an Electrochemical Cell Design Engineer… Animal AI (Sweden) is looking for a CEO.
Accelerace accelerator has an open call for sustainable food ingredients and processes, in collaboration with Tetra Pak.
Transship, the world’s first discount automated freight forwarding platform, replaces old supply chain business models that rely on manual labor and out-dated technologies, with digital workflows, data analytics, and real time tracking of every shipment’s GPS, events, temperature and humidity inside the container as well as motion and tampering sensors. If you need to ship perishables or non-perishables, and want a transparent and efficient experience, get in touch with Transship Founder & CEO Amit Hasak at [email protected].
Incredo® Sugar is a first-of-its-kind, clean-label, sugar-based sugar reduction solution that improves the efficiency of sugar delivery to the sweet taste receptors and achieves the same level of sweetness while enabling substantial sugar reduction without compromising taste, mouthfeel, or texture. Based on real cane sugar, this breakthrough, patented sugar reduction solution enables food manufacturers to develop delicious, better-for-you formulations that deliver great taste experiences and enhance the nutritional values of sweet food products while reducing sugar. Incredo is a great fit for chocolate and gummies producers, bakeries, and more. Reach out to Yuval Naor for more info: [email protected].
Want to share some FoodTech news/project with other FoodTech Weekly subscribers? Hit reply.
Random Stuff
When it rains in Nara, Japan, it looks like a Disney movie (12 sec video):
The pros and cons of bootstrapping vs. raising VC money.
Some birds make nests out of anti-bird pins, to deter other birds from robbing the eggs.
Speaking about eggs, if you boil penguin eggs (not that you ever would!), the egg whites will turn clear. This is because the glycoprotein that would typically make chicken eggs white, ovalbumin, is less present in penguin eggs; instead there’s more of another glycoprotein called penalalbumin, to make the egg more cold resistant.
If you find penguin eggs, please don’t cook them
That feeling when your name is Lowbridge and you finally get to report on a story where a bus gets stuck under a low bridge.
All bound for Moo Moo land:
Some people leave recipes on their own gravestones. A woman has started to cook these dishes and bring them to the gravestones (h/t Marie Dollé).
Thoughts and prayers to the researchers who had to collect milk from a grizzly bear.
I love you.
Daniel
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This issue was produced while listening to Never Ending Story by Limahl. 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.