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- FoodTech Weekly #189 by Daniel S. Ruben
FoodTech Weekly #189 by Daniel S. Ruben
News on FoodTech, food, and society
Daniel S. Ruben
March 22, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 15 minutes
FoodTech Weekly #189
Hi there,
Greetings from Anuga Foodtec in Cologne, Germany (with 50k attendees), where I’ve been seeing more food machines (processing, filling, packaging etc.) than I care to admit. It’s like Disney World for engineers (pretty different from the Viva Colonia crowd). Cool food robots are everywhere. I went to Anuga to help Transship, one of the awesome startups I get to support (I interviewed them for #129 of FoodTech Weekly, and later on became an advisor).
I also joined a panel on scaling up B2B alt protein infrastructure, with Dr. Sara Marquart of Planet A Foods, Dimitri Zogg of Cultivated Biosciences, and Prof. Tilo Hühn of ZHAW. The panel was eloquently moderated by Fabio Ziemssen of ZINTINUS and Albrecht Wolfmeyer of ProVeg.
Almost a Manel, but rescued by Dr. Sara Marquart
Anuga Foodtec was a good reminder of how much stuff that happens behind the scenes, for food to be produced and distributed in a safe and efficient way.
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‘Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a "two sided market", where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.’
While FoodTech Weekly isn’t a social media platform, I’m still pretty fixed on making sure that I don’t enshittify your user experience. So far I’ve been very hesitant to run ads, sponsored posts, or do collabs with ‘partners’ that aren’t a good fit, and I’m trying hard to avoid including content that’s noise, although I don’t always get it right. Suckiness is a slippery slope, and I try not to compromise on quality and lose your trust and loyalty.
It is tempting sometimes to monetize, because running the newsletter costs me money (my newsletter platform Beehiiv alone is $1000+ per year, and I also have paid subscriptions to some other databases and newsletters to stay updated). That’s why I’m so grateful for my 60+ Premium subscribers who each pay $5/month. They do get a food-themed book per year + my deep appreciation, but not much more. But they help cover my costs. So - if you enjoy FoodTech Weekly and want to stop me from the ever-present temptation of enshittifying the newsletter through ads etc, please consider upgrading to a Premium subscription.
This week's rundown:
NuKoKo raises €1.3M for cocoa-free chocolate
Acre Ventures Partners closes its third fund, at $140M
Meet the German teenager living on trains since 2022
Let's go!
Conversations
Spoke with Andrew Massaro of Stable Foods as he was walking home from work in Nairobi, Kenya. Andrew started out with a little reflection: ‘Like many upper middle-class suburban Americans I studied abroad during university and saw that the rest of the world was a very different place.’ Andrew wanted to fix the problems he saw through business, but had big student debts after school which led him to work for Big Auto in Detroit. ‘But after a few years it was clear that not only was I bored but I wasn’t contributing to meaningful change for people who need it, so I paid off my loans and went back into social impact’, Andrew says.
After jobs in Rwanda and Kenya, he met a venture builder called Pyramidia which was looking for a CEO for Stable Foods — and Andrew got the job. Stable Foods works with smallholder farmers to increase their yield, targeting 10x output increases. In the process, the company transforms subsistence farmers into small scale commercial farmers and creates ancillary jobs in rural areas — in farming, logistics, packhouses, etc.
Stable Foods’ innovation is their Irrigation-as-a-Service (IaaS) product where farmers pay a small monthly fee for irrigation on their plot, sort of like a monthly mobile cell contract. The irrigation increases annual yield (it increases the output per plant, increases the number of growing cycles, and allows for counter cyclical selling, which can give farmers a 3-4x higher price), and IaaS requires no CAPEX or up front purchase from the farmer.
Andrew explains: ‘The farmers with whom we work are smart and industrious; they know they can make a lot of money from onions, tomato, and so on, they just lack the water access to enable the high yield sale of those high value products. IaaS provides them that opportunity, and the irrigation even acts as an insurance product for them since they don’t have to worry about drought.’
Once Stable Foods has ensured irrigation, they move on to providing seeds, credit, training, and guaranteed market off take, to further help the farmers. Some have seen output increases of more than 10x. This increased output could lead to farmers making 1M shillings ($7,000) per year, a substantial amount in rural Kenya.
‘By replicating IaaS all over, we can turn Kenya into a food exporting country within 10 years. We are trying to do something absolutely massive here. I don’t see any reason why this model cannot successfully transform rural agriculture’, Andrew excitedly states.
Stable Foods currently has 44 FTEs (full-time employees), and in 2022, Acumen and Mercy Corps Ventures invested $600K. The company is currently raising a $2M Seed round to expand ‘beyond the point of profitability’. Andrew can be reached via LinkedIn and email.
Andrew Massaro / Stable Foods
Noteworthy
Cauldron of Australia has bagged a $6.25M Series A in a round led by Horizons Ventures and joined by SOSV, In-Q-Tel and Main Sequence. The company develops continuous fermentation tech that cuts COGS by 30-50% for its customers, compared to traditional batch fermentation, the company claims. The company, which has 25K liter capacity, now plans for a 500K liter facility.
Poseidona of Spain has scooped up a €1.1M pre-seed round. The company uses algal sidestreams and invasive seaweeds to create cost-effective proteins. The round was led by VC fund Faber, and joined by e.g. Dozen Investments, Sprout & About, Proveg International, and WA4STEAM (Women for STEAM).
ANDFOODS of New Zealand, which produces legume-based dairy alternatives such as plant-based creams and milk, has banked $2.7M in a Seed funding round led by Icehouse Ventures.
Solasta Bio of Glasgow, U.K. which develops products for green insecticides has won ‘the Radicle Natural Plant Protection (NPP) Challenge’ by UPL; this comes with a $1M grant.
Bear Robotics of Redwood City, California has secured a $60M Series C round led by LG Electronics. The company develops server robots that can augment or replace waiters in e.g. restaurants.
Bear Robotics
Guildford, U.K. startup NuKoKo, which develops cocoa-free chocolate by fermenting fava beans, has pulled in €1.3M (appr. $1.4M) in a round led by Oyster Bay VC and joined by SOSV and The Mills Fabrica, and supported by a Innovate UK grant.
A new European food innovation coalition has launched the Regenerative Innovation Portfolio, a €30M initiative aimed at advancing reg ag practices across the continent (h/t FoodHack).
Acre Venture Partners of California has closed a new $140M agrifoodtech fund; it will invest from pre-seed up to Series B. The VC also announced that Lynda Deakin from IDEO and Chef David Chang will join as operating partners.
Olive oil has become the most stolen supermarket item in Spain, as droughts and heatwaves have caused surging prices and shortages.
Forward Fooding has launched this year’s edition of FoodTech500. Some 1,500 foodtech/agtech companies from 77 countries were nominated. The top 10 companies were Nature’s Fynd, Bowery, Ynsect, ProducePay, 80 Acres Farms, Meati Foods, Heura Foods, CropX, Nobell Foods, and Planet A Foods.
News from the FoodTech Weekly community
Farmless (Netherlands) is hiring a Finance and Operations Lead… Hoxton Farms (U.K.) has several open roles.
Enter your startup into the FoodTech World Cup — a global pitch competition to spotlight the world’s most impactful (stealth to Seed stage) startups hosted by Givaudan and FoodHack. Finalists will get to pitch on stage at HackSummit in Lausanne in June, where a winner will be crowned. Apply by April 11 to get involved.
Axfoundation’s Torsåker Farm in Sweden is inviting entrepreneurs and researchers looking to further develop their innovations within sustainable food systems to apply for Innovation Support.
The Call for the BioBoosters accelerator programme run by Jamk University of Applied Sciences in Finland is now open. The 6-month hybrid program targets international startups and scaleups in agritech and bioeconomy with special focus on data-driven solutions, and offers valuable industrial partnerships, investor contacts, and testbed environments. Apply now.
First Bite has extended its deadline to April 30 to apply for an investment of up to $150K — if you’re a founder focused on decarbonizing rice, palm oil, cocoa, fertilizer, or food waste in APAC, apply now.
Austin Lyons has written a really good guest piece in Rhishi Pethes’s Software is Feeding the World about how to feed a growing global population with a shrinking agricultural workforce, and how automation and autonomy will play key roles.
Investment in AgriFoodTech startups is at its lowest point in six years. Has the correction gone too far? Louisa Burwood-Taylor asks.
Need commercial support? Daniel Kats is a seasoned executive with expertise in retail and food services sales, product development, and expansion strategies, actively consulting for top companies in food tech, food waste, and E-Commerce. Throughout his career, he successfully secured over $300M in contract value with major retailers and food companies globally and oversaw commercial teams spanning 11 countries. Email him here.
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Random Stuff
A 17-year old German coder called Lasse Stolley lives on Deutsche Bahn trains, paying €10K (about $11K) for an unlimited annual rail card. He travels 1K km per day in first class and sleeps on the trains during the nights. Says Lasse: ‘I have a lot of freedom and can decide every day where I want to go, whether it’s to the Alps, to a big city or to the sea […] My Bahncard 100 is still valid for six months. I haven’t seen enough yet.’
This article has 150+ questions to get to know someone better. Some of my favorites: 1) What is the best compliment that you’ve ever received? 2) What’s the best piece of career advice you ever got? 3) What’s the best thing you’ve read in the last five years? 4) What’s the most annoying thing people do in public? 5) What would you do tomorrow if you won a million dollars today? 6) What’s your favorite place on Earth? 7) What do you want people to say about you at your funeral?
A New South Wales, Australia farmer has grown a record-sized blueberry, weighing in at 20.4 grams (0.71 ounces).
Toyota has built a vehicle inspired by a Pokemon character and it looks cool.
Someone made a game called BreakTime which runs inside Google Calendar and turns your meetings into bricks — and (optionally) declines the meetings you destroy.
I love you.
Daniel
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This issue was produced while listening to Viva Colonia (Da Simmer dabei, dat is prima) by Höhner. Follow me on LinkedIn and Twitter. Did your brilliant friend forward this to you? Subscribe here.