FoodTech Weekly #193 by Daniel S. Ruben

FoodTech Weekly #193

Hi there,

Greetings from the Swedish Arctic, where I’m skiing this week. It’s magical. Blue skies and dust on crust. And just a quick 17 hour train ride from Stockholm. 10/10 would recommend.

I was recently interviewed by August Solliv of Impact Supporters, a newsletter covering impact VC. I spoke about how the food system -- optimized to eradicate hunger -- is wrecking the planet and is driving healthcare systems bankrupt. But also how tech and innovation can help solve for many of these issues. And I mentioned some AgTech/FoodTech areas where I feel there's a lot of excitement right now, including e.g. AI, regen ag, personalized medicine ('Food is Medicine'), alt chocolate and alt coffee, automation, and food system decarbonization. Check it out if you haven’t already.

This week's rundown:

• Mosa Meat bags $40M for its cultivated meat

• OlsAro secures €2.5M for salt-tolerant wheat

• A dating app for cows

Let's go!

Conversations

Noteworthy

• Cultivated meat startup Mosa Meat of the Netherlands has secured €40M in funding led by Lowercarbon Capital and M Ventures. Notably, German billion euro poultry meat processor PHW Group joined the round. In related news, Dutch cultivated pork startup Meatable just hosted the first public tasting event for cultivated meat in the EU.

• Greeneye Technology of Israel has banked $20M from Deep Insight and existing investors including e.g. Syngenta Group Ventures and JVP. The company’s technology — which can be retrofit to work on most existing machines — can detect and spray only those areas with weeds, rather than hitting the actual crops or bare ground. This saves money and also limits environmental damage.

• Weenat of Nantes, France has been splashed with cash — €8.5M (appr. $9M) in Series C to be exact, from ECBF, Pymwymic, LIBERSET, and IDIA Capital Investissement. The company has deployed 25K+ sensors throughout Europe that collect data on e.g. weather and soil water. This helps farmers optimize irrigation, predict and monitor frost, protect crops from bio-aggressors, and more.

• Washington, U.S. rock removal startup TerraClear has grabbed $15M in funding. The company aims to free farmers from the chore of rock picking, by using computer vision, AI, and robotics.

• Swedish AgTech startup OlsAro has bagged €2.5M (appr. $2.7M) in fresh funding in a round led by Future Food Fund and PINC, and joined by AgFunder, FLORA Ventures, Mudcake, and current investors. The company develops crops that are more heat-tolerant and have improved nitrogen efficiency, reducing the reliance on synthetic fertilizers. OlsAro has done three years of field trials in Bangladesh showing 52% higher yield of its salt-tolerant wheat vs. conventional wheat varieties.

• The Danish government has set aside DKK 518M (appr. $74M) to help farmers finance a feed additive that can reduce enteric methane emissions from cattle by up to 30%, as part of efforts to meet Denmark’s climate goals. The country has 550K dairy cows.

• Espoo, Finland startup NPHarvest has secured €2.2M (appr. $2.3M) where €1.3M is an equity investment from e.g. Nordic FoodTech VC and others, and €0.9M is a grant from the Finnish Ministry of the Environment. NPHarvest has developed a novel solution for collection and recycling of up to 90% of the excess but valuable nutrients from wastewater. The end product is ammonia salt, commonly used in the fertilizer industry.

• The Conseil d’État, the highest administrative court in France, has suspended a government decree that would have prohibited meaty terms like ‘steak’ and ‘sausage’ for plant-based alternatives.

• How do better cows from Scotland result in better school grades in Kenya? The Gates Foundation helped support a program which is basically a dating app for cows, which led to much more productive cows.

• Saveggy of Lund, Sweden has pulled in €1.76M (appr. $1.87M) in investment for its edible coating that can help extend shelf life for fresh fruits and vegetables, and reduce the need for plastics. Investors in the round included Unconventional Ventures, LRF Ventures, Almi Invest GreenTech and business angels.

• Five global-scale food retailers (Ahold Delhaize, Tesco, Woolworths Group, Empire Company and Shoprite) are teaming up to launch $125M retail VC fund W23 which will invest in startups that enhance customer experiences and transform the grocery value chain and address the sector’s sustainability challenges.

• Okanagan Specialty Fruits of Canada has received the green light from Canadian regulatory agencies to commercialize its non-browning Arctic Gala apple, developed through bioengineering (it’s a GMO).

• Bygen of Australia which can convert ag waste (e.g. almond shells, sawdust, pomace, and rice husks) into activated carbon (which is used to filter environmental toxins) has clinched $2.6M in Series A, led by Breakthrough Victoria.

• The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has launched the Global Farm Loss Tool, aimed at assisting growers worldwide in measuring and reporting on-farm food loss.

• ICEYE of Finland has raised €94M (appr. $100M) in growth funding led by Finnish sovereign wealth fund Solidium Oy. The company deploys microsatellites that collect Earth surface images at any time of day, in any weather conditions. This can help with many things, including crop monitoring (good for e.g. determining agricultural subsidies or other financial support for farmers).

News from the FoodTech Weekly community

• John Deere (U.S.) is looking for a Chief Tractor Officer… BioFeyn (U.S.) has several open roles incl. Chief of Staff… REDUCED (Denmark) is hiring a Fermentation Scientist… Root Global (Germany) is recruiting across the board… FUL Foods (Netherlands) wants to bring on a Supply Chain Manager.

• Enter your startup into the FoodTech World Cup. A global pitch competition to spotlight the world’s most impactful startups hosted by Givaudan and FoodHack. Apply today to get involved (yes, the deadline is today, April 19, 2024).

• Know an innovative foodtech/agtech startup based in Sweden? Nominate it for the Impact Maker Award, and a chance to win SEK 100K (appr. $9,000). More info here — apply by April 25, 2024.

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

Random Stuff

• Cyclists now outnumber motorists in Paris.

• Pavarotti had secret stashes of pasta around the Met so that he could wander off stage between arias and have a snack.

• Future Society is developing a perfume made from the (presumed) extinct flower Wendlandia augustifolia; DNA from specimens at the Harvard Herbarium were introduced in a microbe to reproduce its scents (h/t Nathan Paumier).

• Google has launched a new Food Mood tool where you can combine two cuisines into one recipe using AI:

• A drought in Bogotá, Colombia has led the City Mayor, Carlos Fernando Galán, to urge couples to shower together to help ration water. Let’s see in 9 months how Bogotá’s water policy has affected birth rates.

• A German art museum fired an employee for hanging his own art on the museum’s wall. A museum spokesperson commented: ‘All I can say is that we did not receive any positive feedback on the addition from visitors to the gallery.’

​I love you.
Daniel

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This issue was produced while listening to Untitled #3 - Samskeyti by Sigur Rós. 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.