FoodTech Weekly #186 by Daniel S. Ruben

FoodTech Weekly #186

Hi there,

Do you have a great story to tell, but you’re not sure how to craft the message, find the most relevant journalists in AgriFoodTech, and maximize your chances of getting coverage in media outlets? Fear not. I’ve written a (pretty awesome!) guide, which I’ll publish in the next few days 😉 Stay tuned!

Speaking about great stories — the below image is not of Colombia’s main export, but of Convero, by U.K. startup Zya. The company just emerged from stealth with an enzyme that converts up to 30% of consumed sugar into fibre inside the digestive system. Pretty cool! (full disclosure: I’m a very small investor in Zya).

And since we’re on the topic of eating — there’s a new $190M U.S. study funded by the NIH involving 10,000 American participants. Some 500 of them will be living at scientific facilities around the country for six weeks, to eat precisely selected meals and undergoing hundreds of medical tests. The goal is to help understand what people should eat to get healthier. The percentage of U.S. adults ages 20 and over living with obesity is up from 30.5% in 1999 to 41.9% in 2020, and about 15% of American adults have diabetes (up from 10.3% in the early 2000s). I think the study seems exciting and I look forward to learning the results!

This week's rundown:

• Oishii closes huge $134M funding round, showing vertical farming isn’t dead

• France bans ‘meaty’ names for plant-based products

• How melatonin may cut food waste in fruits and vegetables

Let's go!

Conversations

I met Marc Coloma of Heura at the HackSummit in Lausanne in May last year, and we followed up recently for a longer conversation. To be fair, it took some time to get Marc on the line because he was busy successfully raising a €40M Series B round — the largest plant-based round in 2023. Valid excuse, I guess.

Marc has always been a social entrepreneur, engaging himself in student movements, as well as with environmental rights and animal rights organizations. He joined an international animal rights org in Catalonia, and had an epiphany: ‘I was obsessed with how we could drive impact in our campaigns, so I started studying marketing and sociology, and realized that there needs to be structures in place for change to be able to happen. If you have bikes without bike lanes, people will not bike.’

Marc mentions the example of how animal rights activists in New York City 100 years ago tried — pretty unsuccessfully — to improve welfare for horses, until Henry Ford came along and brought cars to the masses, which turned horses into pets. The new structures changed the status quo.

Marc’s learnings led him to start Heura in 2017 together with Bernat Añaños Martinez. ‘We are pursuing a protein transition to achieve sustainability at scale, which has happened in other industries. We want to make the problem obsolete, by creating successors, not alternatives. Current supply chains rely on animals to get proteins, but they’re an obsolete technology to fulfill our needs,’ Marc explains.

Many consumers have doubts about the healthfulness of alternative protein products (with long ingredient lists and many additives), but Marc believes something else is the key challenge for the category to address: ‘The main thing to keep improving is taste. Health and nutrition can keep improving, but poor taste is what often drives the lack of repeat purchases’.

Heura uses scalable, nutritious plant-based materials including microorganisms to create foods that society loves, and in the process plans to become one of the largest actors in Europe. This includes educating consumers on how their consumption habits have impacts, and how changed habits can bring a better future.

‘We understand the functionality of meat - juiciness, meltability, stretchability and so on, and we have a patented microstructure approach. This allows us to develop superior products that have the best nutritional value on the market, while being clean label and additive free’, Marc claims.

Heura is also working on exploiting the functionality of specific plant cell wall materials in their native structures, so that they don’t have to go through any extraction process. The company hopes this will enable them to eventually — partially or fully — replace protein isolates.

Heura today has 110 employees, of which 25 in R&D. Most are based in Spain. The company produces and sells a wide range of alternative protein products such as plant-based chicken, burgers, breaded products, and cold cuts at 22K points of sale in 20 countries in retail and foodservice. Last year the company did €38M+ in revenue, and Heura aims to reach profitability by 2025. (Spain/Portugal became profitable for Heura in late 2023). ‘We’ve escaped the negative market dynamics’, Marc states, matter-of-fact. Heura is also almost at price parity for beef in Spain, but ‘there’s still some way to go for chicken and pork’, Marc acknowledges.

So far, Heura has raised €60M, of which around €10M from crowdfunding (‘we’ve built a community of 450,000 people, and are a community-led brand’, Marc says proudly).

Marc is eager for consumers to try the category and in particular Heura’s products, ‘to be part of the food revolution that we need’. Heura is also starting a B2B licensing division to help other companies create a new generation of products. And the company is hiring for many roles. Marc can be reached via email.

Noteworthy

• U.S.-based vertical farming company Oishii has closed a $134M Series B round, led by Japanese NTT (the majority of investors are from Japan). The company grows premium crops like Omakase and Koyo strawberries, and Rubī Tomatoes.
  

• 🇫🇷 #1: France-based aquaponic farming startup Agriloops has raised €13M (appr. $14M) in crowdfunding, debt, and grants. The company will grow 100 tons of prawns, fruits, and vegetables annually.
  

• 🇫🇷 #2: French online organic community-based e-grocer La Fourche bagged €2.5M (appr. $2.7M) in crowdfunding in just 72 hours (h/t DigitalFoodLab).
  

• 🇫🇷 #3: Startup Starfish Bioscience of Bordeaux, France has harvested €900K to develop solutions to restore the soil microbiota.

• 🇫🇷# 4: The French government has published a decree, banning ‘meaty’ names from plant-based labels (e.g. steak, entrecote, and ham)

• Singapore startup 70/30 Food Tech has nabbed $700K in a Seed extension round backed by e.g. Better Bite Ventures, allowing the company to develop mycelium-based protein products that will provide an alternative to e.g. conventional chicken.

• Mondra has secured a £3.6m (appr. $4.5M) Pre-Series A investment from e.g. FoodSparks by PeakBridge and Ponderosa Ventures; the company develops an AI-driven SaaS platform that decarbonizes the food supply chain by e.g. recording, monitoring, and sharing environmental data.

• Ozempics users cut grocery spending by up to 9% (combine this news with the fact that seven of the top ten global food manufacturers up until now have made more than 2/3 of their sales in Britain from unhealthy products — these companies might be in for a reckoning).

• Melatonin (the sleep hormone) may help reduce cold injury in fruits and vegetables by 20% to 40%, a new research paper shows.

• Not quite selling sand in the desert, but almost: BioMush (prev. Nordic Umami Company) has struck a deal to sell a soyless umami sauce-based yuzu dressing to Japan Airlines. The sauce is made from all-natural ingredients from food industry side streams.

• Y Combinator alumni Farmtheory of Bengaluru, India has scored $1.45M in Seed funding in a round led by Merak Ventures. The startup acquires unsold e.g. ‘ugly’ produce from 3,000 partner farmers and then resells the produce to e.g. catering companies, food processors, restaurants, and cloud kitchens.
  

• ICYIMI, South Korean scientists have successfully developed a novel type of rice that has been enriched with cultivated beef protein and fat, offering 8% more protein and 7% more fat compared to traditional rice varieties. The new variety is pink, with a supposedly lower environmental footprint than conventional beef, and just $0.03 more expensive per kg than standard rice.
  

• The latest must-have in Japan? Disused food and beverage trolleys of the Tokyo-Osaka route Shinkansen bullet trains.
  

• Happy Grain Bin Safety Week! The Grain Weevil is a cute robot that will inspect your grain silo (1 min video).

News from the FoodTech Weekly community

• Lupinta (Sweden) is hiring a COO… PerfectSeason (Denmark) is recruiting a Supply Chain Coordinator… NOVAMEAT (Spain) is looking for a Foodservice Sales Manager.
  

• Marina Schmidt and Andrea Walji are founding a nonprofit using short films and visual campaigns to promote the food system transition and affect measurable change in policy, corporations, and consumer behavior. Looking for advice and support to build fundraising capacity in Europe. Marina can be reached here.
  

• FoodTech start-up CFO available: If anyone is looking for an early stage fundraising-led CFO/Corporate Operations executive UK/EU/US, reach out here.
  

• Don’t forget to sign up for Sweden FoodTech Big Meet, April 9-11.
  

• Know a solution to cut livestock methane emissions that combines high > 80% abatement rate, cost effectiveness, safety, scalability across geographies and agricultural systems, and positive effects on animal productivity? Marble is looking for you.

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

Random Stuff

• Peak Italy: The new airport of Florence will be covered by a 19 acre (7 ha.) functioning vineyard:

• Database of 100 carbon accounting companies, mapped against 350+ brands that use them.

• Isolated for six months in Antarctica, scientists began to develop their own accent.

• A cybertruck for ag? John Deere has launched autonomous, electric herbicide sprayers called GUSS (the Global Unmanned Spray System). One employee can monitor up to eight vehicles.

• Nate Crosser has written a good, data-driven post on how to eat and behave to optimize your longevity:

• I found this read a little depressing, but there’s also some truths to this:

• Marta Puerto in Spain recently lost her job as a Product Marketing Manager. For months, she applied for countless jobs but didn’t even get interviews. Then she put out this video a few days ago — which went viral with 40K likes and thousands of comments within 24 hours. Watch it.

I love you.
Daniel

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This issue was produced while listening to Långsamt - MTV Unplugged 2023 by Mando Diao and Ane Brun. 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.