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FoodTech Weekly #173 by Daniel S. Ruben
News on FoodTech, food, and society
Daniel S. Ruben
November 17, 2023 • Estimated Reading Time: 14 minutes
FoodTech Weekly #173
Hi there,
As the saying goes, nobody in their right mind would come to Helsinki in November.
Consequently, on Nov 29, 2023 I’ll be giving a keynote (and joining a panel) at the TONIC Summit in Helsinki, Finland. The event will convene startups, investors, and entrepreneurs for an intense and hopefully fun day around all things food and tech, right before Slush. Startups can apply for free tickets (I might be able to secure a few more free tickets too…). If you’re around Helsinki at the end of Nov, I hope to see you at TONIC!
This week's rundown:
Vertical farming scaleup Bowery secures $85M, at slashed valuation
Toopi Organics scores €8.4M EIC grant to turn human pee into plant biostimulants
Why cooking oil thefts are on the rise in Spain
Let's go!
Conversations
Was supposed to meet in person with Leonardo Marcovitz of More Foods on the sidelines of FoodTechIL, but the event was cancelled after the Oct 7, 2023 terror attacks. So we connected online instead.
Leonardo grew up in Venezuela, and moved to Israel 11 years ago. About six years ago he became vegan, and then realized he wanted to eliminate animals from the food system. ‘But I saw a mismatch between what consumers demanded and what existing alt protein products offered; many of these products were perceived as highly processed, contained major allergens, and had long ingredient lists’, he notes.
So he founded More Foods - center of plate clean label foods with short ingredient lists, high in protein and fibers, and with no major allergens, to help people find options to animal-sourced foods. Today, the company does e.g. pulled meat, cuts, and cubes — ‘they’re beefy, lamby, and porky, but not the exact same as the animal-sourced products’ as Leonardo puts it. The products are sold B2B into foodservice, and served at e.g. major tech companies’ canteens in Israel. More Foods is also about to expand to France, Switzerland, the U.K., sometimes as private label. So far, More Foods has raised $1.6M.
The company launched last year and sold product for more than 60k dishes; this year More Foods will sell product for 180K dishes, and in 2024 the plan is to do $1M in revenue.
More Foods is interested in getting in touch with distributors and customers in the foodservice segment in the UK and EU (in particular Germany and the Netherlands). The company is also raising a bridge round in advance of a larger Seed round next year. Leonardo can be reached via LinkedIn and email.
More Foods
Noteworthy
U.S. indoor vertical farming scaleup Bowery has secured $85M of its $220M target for its Series D raise. The valuation is down 85% less than two years after Bowery raised a C round at a $2.3B valuation. The company has also gone through several rounds of layoffs recently, and put off the opening of two new farming facilities in Georgia and Texas. As Ambrook recently noted, indoor farming is facing a reckoning.
French startup Le Fourgon, which delivers and picks up reusable glass bottles and containers in 2000+ French cities and towns, has been fois gras’d with €10M, led by id4 Ventures and Teampact and supported by La Poste Ventures as well as several business angels. The company says it has helped avoid 10M+ single-use bottles and containers since its creation, thanks to their containers that can be washed and reused up to 40 times.
Aigen, of Seattle, Washington, has banked $12M in fresh funding led by ReGen Ventures and joined by e.g. Cleveland Avenue and New Enterprise Associates. The company builds solar-powered robots that use AI to navigate, weed, and analyze row crops, in order to reduce the use of chemicals and fossil fuels in farming.
Talus Renewables of New York has bagged a $22M Series A round, to step up production of its green ammonia technology that uses water, air, and renewable energy to create fertilizer (h/t FoodHack).
DigitalFoodLab, in a new analysis, says that FoodTech investments have been fairly stable for the first three quarters of this year. Still, the level of investment is down 50% vs. 2022, and 70% vs. 2021 (not inflation-adjusted). Europe’s sharing of total global FoodTech funding has increased from 12% to 30% in the last few years. DigitalFoodLab notes that while funding has decreased for e.g. quick commerce / delivery startups, funding has increased in segments such as e.g. alternative protein ingredients, regenerative agriculture, packaging, and food waste-reduction software.
Source: DigitalFoodLab
National dairy cooperative Dairy Farmers of America (DFA) has received a $22.9M grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for a pilot project to reduce dairy farm methane emissions through the use of a feed additive.
French biotech startup Toopi Organics, which develops plant biostimulants from the fermentation of human urine to cut the need for mineral fertilizers, has been awarded a €8.4M (appr. $9.1M) grant from the European Innovation Council (EIC) Accelerator. This comes on top of a recent $17M equity funding round for the company.
Positive Carbon of Dublin, Ireland has netted a €2.3M (appr. $2.5M) Seed round led by the EIIS Fund (Business Venture Partners) and joined by HEARTFELT, Gateway Ventures, and Enterprise Ireland. The company supplies commercial kitchens with fully automated food waste monitoring sensors that enable the businesses to make informed decisions that help to reduce food waste and cut costs. Positive Carbon claims their solution has led to a 50% reduction in food waste, equivalent to 4,000 tons of potential waste avoided.
After a 100% surge in olive oil prices (driven by extremely dry weather around the Mediterranean), cooking oil thefts are up.
U.S. startup Humane has launched AI Pin, a wearable device which is a phone, computer, and an AI software platform all in one, with lots of cool features. One of these is to support nutrition goals; through computer vision, AI Pin can help its user identify a piece of food (and see whether it meets their fitness goals). More in this 10 min video.
Crédit Agricole, the second-largest bank in France, has done a first close (at €60M) of a new €100M fund which will invest in AgTech and FoodTech startups. The fund will be managed by VC firm Supernova Invest, and do €2M to €4M tickets at Series A and B.
TechBrew Robotics of British Columbia, Canada, has rebranded as 4AGRobotics, and has harvested $17.5M in fresh funding. The company develops an autonomous harvesting robot for mushroom farming, that it says can help cut labor costs and increase profitability (video of the robot in action here). The funding was led by Industrial Innovation Venture Fund and InBC Investment Corp.
Key trends in functional foods for 2024 (h/t Marie Dollé).
News from the FoodTech Weekly community
Oceanium (U.K.) is hiring a Finance Director… Beta Bugs (U.K.) is recruiting an Entomologist… EVERY (U.S.) is looking for a Director, Commercial Partnerships & Business Development… Fermify (Austria) wants to bring on a Food Product Development Scientist… Nutreco (The Netherlands) has an open position for an Innovation Lead, Cell Nutrition
Brinc is looking to support the next breed of entrepreneurs focused on solving the world’s biggest challenges in the health industry with the new AgriFood Accelerator Program. By receiving a bespoke curriculum, and valuable one-on-one meetings with Brinc’s global network of mentors and founders, you will be empowered with new strategies and tools to fundraise and explore new opportunities from corporate engagements to market distribution. Apply by Dec 4, 2023.
On Jan 16 2024, Vinnova, Israel Innovation Authority, Innosuisse and Enterprise Singapore are hosting a webinar and networking re. their upcoming call for proposals on food tech and alternative proteins - between Sweden, Israel, Switzerland and Singapore within Eureka. More info here.
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Random Stuff
Naming your restaurant ‘Thai Food Near Me’ is a creative way to hack the Google algorithm.
From white strawberries to yellow watermelons, the fruit aisle is getting trippy.
Adam Savage from Mythbusters built a rickshaw pulled by a robot from Boston Dynamics, and it’s glorious (37 sec video).
Malaria could be eradicated by 2040, after a ‘game-changing’ vaccine was recently approved by the WHO.
Some guy coded a script to have David Attenborough narrate his life in real time (it’s pretty fun!) (video, 1.5 minutes):
Insurance giant Swiss Re says that Waymo’s driverless vehicles file 76% fewer property damage claims compared to human-driven cars.
I’m a big fan of Human Progress:
I love you.
Daniel
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This issue was produced while listening to One Day by Matisyahu. Follow me on LinkedIn and Twitter. Did your brilliant friend forward this to you? Subscribe here.