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- FoodTech Weekly #18 by Daniel S. Ruben
FoodTech Weekly #18 by Daniel S. Ruben
News on FoodTech, food, and society
Daniel S. Ruben
September 25, 2020 • Estimated Reading Time: 13 minutes
FoodTech Weekly #18
Hi there,
I'm not sure about you, but I've hada lot of video calls this year. And every time I receive a new calendar invite, I sort of know what type of organization I'll be speaking with. Using Whereby,Join.me, Google Hangouts or Google Meet? It's a startup, or an individual consultant - cool! Using Zoom or BlueJeans? It's any other sane person - all good! Using Cisco WebEx, GoToMeeting, Amazon Chime, Microsoft Teams, or Skype? Sigh...
Anyways. It's been a long week of scrolling already, and you need to save your strength. Let's cut to the chase!
Highlights
Conversations: Ilkka Taponen and Nicolas Morin-Forest
Noteworthy: Cell-based meat startup Mosa Meat raises €47M; Abu Dhabi builds the world's largest indoor farm; Ireland's FoodMarble raises €1.2M for breath analyzer helping people with IBS
The Profile: Andrew D. Ive (Big Idea Ventures)
Random Stuff: A new tool to detect counterfeit whiskey; the billionaire who wanted to die broke has finally given all his money to charity; the International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste. And more
Conversations
A couple of years ago, I did research on insects as food and animal feed (because why not). Turns out the leading repository for insect startups -- covering hundreds of companies from all over the world in a very granular way -- was built and managed by this guy in Finland called Ilkka Taponen. So I reached out. And it turns out that he's this super smart dude who's into metal music, craft beer, and lean process development, and nurtures a dream of one day relocating to Iceland. Ilkka has since migrated the insect repository to Golden, but he still has the misfortune of being stuck with me. So I caught up with him this week. He has had an exciting career, e.g. working on lean-based process development for Finnish alternative protein startup Gold&Green in Helsinki. These days, however, he's Business Process Development Manager for micro satellite startup ICEYE in Finland, which announced a €74M raise just this week. The company has 3 small satellites up at lower orbits and faster rotation around Earth than regular satellites, meaning it can quickly track everything from moving ice in the Arctic to imagery from hurricanes, flooding, and oil spills. The company is hiring, and if you ever want to get in touch Ilkka, you can always ping him via LinkedIn.
Ilkka Taponen
Had a chance to connect with Nicolas Morin-Forest this week (thanks, L.N!). He always had been appalled by images of ducks and geese being force-fed, and when trying to raise awareness at his university, other students were mocking him. After graduating from Sciences Po, Nicolas started working for L'Oréal for a few years but lacked a sense of purpose. Then he discovered the field of cellular agriculture, learning about startups like Finless Foods and Perfect Day -- and saw that nothing similar existed in France; it was a white space. So he started Gourmey in April 2019, with two co-founders, all wanting to commit their scientific expertise and business acumen into a company with an impact. Gourmey has decided to focus on cell-based foie gras. Using embryonic stem cells, cultivating without scaffolding, and aiming to displace conventional foie gras, Gourmey is developing a premium product that can achieve price parity with the conventional meat in the fairly near future. Foie gras is a $2B market, but the production is banned in 70 countries as the only way to get true foie gras is to force-feed an animal, to blow up the liver to 400-500 grams (14-17 oz). While conventional ducks raised for foie gras take three months to raise, Gourmey can do it in a few weeks. The company will likely raise a Series A within the coming year and hopes to be on the market in 3-4 years. So what does Gourmey need? Nicolas is interested in talking to investors that could do a Seed extension round, or a Series A. He's also interested in getting in touch with NYC restaurants looking for alternatives to foie gras (foie gras is banned in NYC from 2022) -- and he's looking for biotech mentorships. If you'd like to get in touch with Nicolas, you can email him here.
Nicolas Morin-Forest, Gourmey
Noteworthy
Announced today, cell-based meat startup Mosa Meat has raised €47M as part of a larger Series B, led by Blue Horizon Ventures. The company will use the fund to extend its current pilot production facility, develop an industrial-sized production line, expand its team, and introduce cultured meat to consumers. Mosa Meat was founded by Dr. Mark Post, who in 2013 unveiled the world's first cell-based (lab-grown) hamburger.
Abu Dhabi is building the world's largest indoor farm; a 17.5 hectare (43 acre) plot will be home to a facility producing 10,000 tons of fresh food every year. The project is being developed with the help of expertise from the Netherlands, the leading knowledge cluster for greenhouse farming in the world. Abu Dhabi's new farm is part of a GCC push to achieve greater self-reliance and food security. Meanwhile in Brazil, startup BeGreen has raised $3M. The company builds its farms and greenhouses close to malls and shopping centers, to be able to offer fresher, locally-grown produce.
HATCH, one of the leading sustainable aquaculture accelerators in the world, is splitting into three business units; Hatch Investments (which operates a fund), Hatch Innovation Services (which advises companies, governments, and others), and Hatch Accelerators. More in this neat 2 minute video.
Alt protein holding company Green Monday, based in Hong Kong, just raised $70M (leading investors in the round included TPG Rise Fund, Swire Pacific, and CPT Capital). The company owns plant-based protein brand OmniPork, as well as Green Commons, a grocery store chain that distributes plant-based products. Green Monday will use the funding to increase its Green Commons retail presence, as well as accelerate product development. Green Monday currently serves 10 markets and has about 10,000 point-of-sale operations.
The National Science Foundation in the U.S. has awarded U.C. Davis a $3.5M five-year grant for cell-based meat research; this marks the first major government grant in the U.S. for research into cell-based protein production. The U.C. Davis team will use the funding to do research on stem cells, plant-based serum-free medium cell-line differentiation (because fetal bovine serummay look like apple juice when you Google image search it, but it really isn't), new biomaterials for 3D tissue structures, and a life-cycle analysis.
Irish FoodTech startup FoodMarble just bagged €1.2M in fresh funding, fromthe Halo Business Angel Network. FoodMarble has developed a personal digestive breath analyzer (linked to an app), which helps people who suffer from digestive problems such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) to identify specific foods -- in real time -- that could be trigging symptoms. The startup sold more than 15K devices in 2019, driving €1M in sales.
FoodMarble
Researchers have nailed down a process to freeze avocado plant cuttings and revive them at a late date (so if humanity survives some sort of apocalyptic event, there will at least still be avocados); this breakthrough could help preserve certain species of the fruit when pests and diseases hit. Cryopreservation is already used for preserving other foods such as potato, apples, and banes- - as well as to preserve human eggs and sperm for in-vitro fertilization.
The global seaweed market is projected to surpass $26B by 2026. Seaweed can be used as e.g. food, animal feed, or fertilizer.
A record $435M has been invested into fermentation, according to a new (great) state-of-the-industry report from the Good Food Institute. Of the 44 fermentation companies focused on alternative proteins, almost half - 21 - launched between 2019 and the first seven months of 2020. Here's one example: Israeli fermentation-tech startup Phytolon just refilled its bank account with $4.1M of fresh funding. The company programs yeast that, when fermented, produce colors useful to the food industry.
The Profile
Andrew D. Ive started his career early on, launching a project as a teenager which he grew and excited. He eventually succumbed to working for a bank, which made certain people happy but made Andrew miserable. The bank culture was 180 degrees away from his personality as an individual. He eventually got the chance to head up business accelerator Food-X, and became a Partner in its VC, SOSV. It helped him understand what companies that could make a difference, what made teams great, and how not to stumble around scaling (and much more). Building on his experiences from Food-X, and the realizat
ion that the food industry was 10-15 years behind biotech, tech, and software when it comes to investors (who are fewer, less developed, and less sophisticated) and investment, he decided to launch Big Idea Ventures [full disclosure: I'm a mentor to BIV]. BIV focuses on alternative protein and plant-based foods, an area where Andrew felt we could have a much bigger impact on solving issues like climate, biodiversity loss, water issues, etc. Today, BIV runs accelerators programs in New York and Singapore, and also added the $50M New Protein Fund to invest in some of the most exciting startups. And Andrew is -- hopefully -- having the kind of impact he was dreaming of, when he was working at that bank, many years ago.
Random Stuff
If you're a startup looking to raise funds, and you want to get your pitch deck in front of investors, shoot an email with your deck to Arman Anatürk over at FoodHack (and if you're a VC / CVC / Angel looking to see more FoodTech startup dealflow, ping Arman to be added to his send list).
The billionaire who wanted to die broke has finally given all his money away to charity. Inspiring read.
Cheers! A new tool can detect counterfeit whiskey (and gin and vodka), by using a laser. Needless to say, the solution was developed by scientists in Scotland.
September 29 is the International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste. The FAO has more. And their two-pager give 9 easy tips on how we can fight food waste together.
I'll be moderating a session on 'Producing in the city' during Sweden FoodTech Big Meet next week, on Sep 30. I'll have convos with Dr. Pasi Vainikka, CEO of Solar Foods, as well as with Dr. Masatoshi Funabashi of Sony Computer Science Labs, and UNIDO in Rome. There'll be demo pitches by pretty cool startups from Sweden, Finland, France, and Nigeria. I'll do a fireside chat Sara Farley, Managing Director, Food Initiative at the Rockefeller Foundation, on how to envision better urban food systems for 2050. It's all free, and all online. Sign up today.
I love you.
Daniel
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