FoodTech Weekly #180 by Daniel S. Ruben

FoodTech Weekly #180

Hi there,

A warm welcome to the 139 new subscribers who have signed up since last week. Many of you probably found FoodTech Weekly after coming across The Ultimate FoodTech Resource Guide (super modest name, I know) which I published 6 days ago.

Since you’re new here, this is me:

OK, back to the Ultimate FoodTech Resource Guide: I basically just felt I kept getting asked the same questions over and over, about where to find the most relevant FoodTech and AgTech media, newsletters, podcasts, influencers, events, incubators, accelerators, funding, universities, and so on. So I built the guide to help people and the ecosystem, essentially. Thanks again to all of you who pitched in with ideas on my LinkedIn posts.

FoodHack recently asked 20 leading FoodTech VCs what areas and technologies they’re excited about in 2024 — and for some reason I was asked to give my opinions too (I mentioned sustainable fertilizers, food waste, and driving consumer adoption of alt protein products). Check it out.

I was also interviewed by Alex Shandrovsky for Vegconomist alongside a couple of much smarter folks than I, on the changing investment landscape for alt protein. Give it a read.

If 2024 food and FoodTech trend forecasts are your thing, then these posts from PeakBridge VC and from Five Seasons Ventures are right up your alley.

This week's rundown:

• Aleph Farms receives world-first regulatory approval of cultivated beef

• Better Juice nabs Series A for tech that turn up to 80% of fruit juice sugar into dietary fibers

• Why drunk grizzlies keep getting hit by trains in Montana

Let's go!

Conversations

Spoke with Niall Haughian (CEO) and Dr. Monica Saavedra (CTO) of Lambda Agri. The company designs materials that convert high-energy (UV) light into lower-energy (red light), a process known as luminescent downshifting. This can help boost photosynthesis in greenhouse plants, boosting crop yields by 9%.

But let’s start from the beginning.

Niall’s family used to be in cattle farming, but he spent 10 years in banking before jumping into the startup world. ‘I just wanted to innovate and decarbonize the world, so I went into cleantech’, Niall explains.

Monica is a physicist by background, who worked on everything from batteries to DNA sequencers, almost anything that needs functional materials. Her drive is to feed the world.

Lambda, in essence a chemistry company, started in the solar space. While giving a speech at Cambridge, a postdoc walked by and casually asked if Lambda had thought about plants, because ‘plants really care about red light as well.’ That led to Lambda eventually pivoting from solar to AgTech a few years ago as the potential was bigger and more imminent.

The company has designed and put certain molecules together, which go into a liquid that’s spraycoated on top of e.g. greenhouse glass, using a spray gun or an automated spraying trolley. The coating helps plants become more efficient in converting sunlight to biomass, and it reduces the need to use electricity for providing certain light frequencies that plants need in different ratios. ‘We can make food that comes out of greenhouses cheaper, and that should be good for nutrition equality and food security, while boosting farmer incomes, Monica says.

Lambda also plans to integrate their molecules in the plastic materials of polytunnels, helping the plastic last longer which will reduce CO2 emissions. The company will sell its solution both B2B to e.g. paint and chemical companies, but also directly to large greenhouse operators (both glass retrofitting and polytunnels are multi billion dollar industries).

Lambda currently has 5 employees, and has raised £850K in equity so far. The company is raising a £1.5M round (already 1/3 committed), which will unlock a U.K. gov’t grant of £450K.

The company is looking to engage with investors that ideally have existing relations with e.g. greenhouses, and the glass, plastic, and chemicals industries. Lambda also wants to partner with companies that sell to greenhouse growers. Niall can be reached via email as well as LinkedIn, just as Monica.

Noteworthy

• Mediterranean Food Lab of Israel has banked a $17M Series A round, led by Gullspång Re:food alongside PeakBridge, Arancia Industrial, FoodBridge, and others. The company uses solid state fermentation to transform e.g. legumes, grains, and upcycled food side streams into clean label savory ingredients that can help e.g. give meaty flavors to plant-based meat alternatives.

• Israeli startup SeeTree has secured a $17.5M Series C round. The company digitizes the process of monitoring tree health for orchards and forests, through the use of drones, ground sensors, AI, multi-spectral imaging, and in-field data collection.

• KisanKonnect of Pune, India has harvested $3.7M in pre-Series A funding. The company started out as a farm-to-consumer service to improve the supply chain and cut waste (enabling its 300,000 consumers to place orders and see which farms their produce comes from), but has since evolved to help its 5,000 smallholder farmer partners to adopt climate-resilient farming practices and technologies. The round was led by Green Frontier Capital, and joined by Dhanuka Agritech and several family offices.

• Burro of Philadelphia, U.S. has raised a $24M Series B round led by Catalyst Investors and Translink Capital, and joined by e.g. S2G Ventures and Cibus Capital. The startup develops autonomous robots that work collaboratively outdoors alongside human workers. Burro has 300+ robots working as harvest assist robots in nurseries and permanent crops in the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand.

• Aleph Farms of Israel has received the first regulatory approval in the world for cultivated beef, by the Israeli Ministry of Health. Previously, cell-cultured chicken products from companies Eat Just and UPSIDE Foods received regulatory clearance in Singapore (2020) and the U.S. (2023). Aleph may now sell its products in restaurants and retailers in Israel; the company has also applied for regulatory approvals in other major markets.

• Singapore-based AgTech firm DayaTani has closed a $2.3M Seed funding round, led by KBI Investment and Ascent Venture Group. DayaTani focuses on transforming Indonesian agriculture through tech and digital solutions.

• The Human Touch Robotics of Oslo, Norway, has bagged a NOK 20M (appr. $1.9M) Seed round from ProVenture and Voima Ventures. The company develops robots that automate the packing process for online grocers. This helps maintain order fulfilment accuracy and cut costs, compared to manual packing.

• Tomatoes (like many other crops) have been harmonized to fit in the supply chain; sturdier, more uniformly round, grown on plants with higher yields and greater disease resistance. But this all had trade-offs in terms of lost flavor and perhaps nutrition. Some scientists are now trying to bring back flavor to tomatoes sold in grocery stores — but how should tomatoes taste?
  

• Interesting new report on ClimateTech innovation investment in Africa. Catalyst Fund received 3,000+ pitch decks last year; 90% didn’t focus on Catalyst’s funding targets Africa and/or climatetech, but of the remaining 300 decks, most were from agriculture and energy startups.

• Israeli company Better Juice has chugged down a Series A round (sum undisclosed) which was led by global ingredients corporation Ingredion. Better Juice has developed an enzymatic technology that converts up to 80% of the sugars in fruit juice into dietary fibers and non-digestible sugars, without impact e.g. the vitamins and minerals in the final product. The company had raised $8M prior to the A round, and now hopes to extend its technology to other liquids with natural sources of sugar such as milk, beer, and wine.

News from the FoodTech Weekly community

• Michroma (Argentina) is recruiting a Business Development Manager… Cultimate (Germany) is hiring a Food Scientist - Cultivated Fat… The Green Dairy (Sweden)s is looking for a Project Leader, Plant-Based Liquid Formulations… Stable Foods (Kenya) wants to bring on a Director of Finance & Strategy… BIOMILQ (U.S.) has several open positions… The Rockefeller Foundation (U.S.) has an opening for a Manager, Regenerative Agriculture.
  

• Mathilde Godeau is a Packaging Engineer working at Umiami, a French company producing plant-based whole-cuts. With a keen interest in the Nordic region, Mathilde is eager to take a 6-month sabbatical and contribute her skills and expertise to a dynamic work environment, ideally within a food company or startup in the Nordics, before returning to France and Umiami. She can be contacted via email.
  

• Zinc is an early stage mission-driven investor, selecting and investing in founders who use cutting-edge science and tech to create innovative solutions and build ambitious businesses that tackle the most pressing and complex challenges facing the health of people and the planet. Applications are now open for the next cohort, which kicks off in May 2024. Learn more here.

Want to share some FoodTech news/project with other FoodTech Weekly subscribers? Hit reply.

Random Stuff

• Trains in Montana sometime spill grains that ferment, get consumed by grizzlies who become drunk, and then get hit by other trains.
  

• An octopus solving an underwater maze (fascinating 17 min video of a smart animal).
  

• Techno-optimism: What you should be excited about in 2024.
  

• ‘Mobile ALOHA: Your housekeeping robot’ is very, very cool. And also a bit scary (2 min video).

• A mouse was secretly filmed tidying a man’s shed every night.

• Android robot makes someone a cup of coffee (1 min video).
  

• In 2024, China’s electric vehicle chargers are estimated to use more electricity than all of Greece:

• A Tasmanian garden has won a prize for the world’s ugliest lawn. Says proud winner Kathleen Murray: ‘My backyard looks like a real-life Hungry Hungry Hippo game… I’m all for guilt-free weekends, especially since my ex-husband left with the lawnmower back in 2016.’

​I love you.

Daniel

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This issue was produced while listening to Hold Me Closer by Elton John & Britney Spears. Follow me on LinkedIn and Twitter. Did your brilliant friend forward this to you? Subscribe here.

Disclosures: I'm founder of Solvable Syndicate. I’m an operating advisor to VC/investment firms Nordic FoodTech VC, Mudcake, and Blume Equity. I'm a mentor at accelerators Katapult Ocean, Big Idea Ventures, and Norrsken Accelerator. I'm an advisor to BIOMILQ, FoodHack, Hooked, Ignitia, Improvin, IRRIOT, Juicy Marbles, Lupinta, NitroCapt, Oceanium, petgood, Rootically, Stockeld Dreamery, Transship, VEAT, and Volta Greentech; in some of these startups, I have equity.

Boring disclaimer: The newsletter content is intended only to provide general and preliminary information to folks interested in FoodTech, and shall not be construed as the basis for any investment decision or strategy. I assume no liability in regards to any investment, divestment, or retention decision taken by readers of this newsletter content.