FoodTech Weekly #201 by Daniel S. Ruben

FoodTech Weekly #201

Hi there,

I’m at HackSummit in Lausanne this week. Days filled with rooftop sunset networking events, dinners in vineyards overlooking Lake Geneva (with a double rainbow), moderating one of the main event stages, meeting new and old friends, sampling way too much (the plant-based steak from Planted in the picture below was really good!), listening in on keynotes and panels, learning the latest in FoodTech and ClimateTech…HackSummit doesn’t disappoint.

For any Swedish 🇸🇪 speakers out there, I was interviewed by Impact Loop on CEA / indoor vertical farming (tl;dr — the industry overpromised and underdelivered — and has been shaken up a bit — but we’ll still see some CEA companies succeed, at least for certain crops, in certain geographies, e.g. with extreme weather, or on remote islands).

I was also interviewed by Elin Sobczak for episode #211 of her podcast Jobba Jobba Jobba where we dig into all things food system, FoodTech, and food innovation. If you can read the IKEA catalogue in the original language (🇸🇪), then give this episode a listen 🎧

This week's rundown:

• Prolific scores $55M Series B round to control and grow cells using light

• Pairwise develops ‘world’s first’ seedless blackberry using CRISPR

• The city turning cemeteries into urban solar farms

Let's go!

Conversations

‘What really motivates me, what keeps me up at night, is that we have a nice opportunity for a win-win-win. Customers buy our products to save money, but in the process they cut food waste. And since they save money with our solution, we can make money too! It’s a nice thing’, says Franz Seubert, co-founder & MD of AIPERIA.

I recently got to know Franz via a Zoom call. He grew up in his father’s small supermarket in the German countryside: ‘I experienced how food ends up in the trash due to poor planning. Our store was family-owned, so this hurt. We for example had to throw out pretzels in the evenings. Later in my life I worked for (popular food discount chain) Aldi and saw the same problem there.’

After a Masters in Information Systems at the University of Würzburg, Franz met his co-founders Fabian Taigel and Jan Meller: ‘This was a heureka moment. They had essentially developed the solution for the food waste problem I had experienced my whole life.’

AIPERIA was born, and decided to initially focus on food waste in baked goods: ‘It’s hard for bakeries to forecast demand, and a baked product you don’t sell today, you have to throw out in the evening’, Franz notes. The company built a solution that it offered for free to bakeries, and it worked.

Certain things, like toothpaste sales, are easy for supermarkets to plan for. The demand is constant and stable, and the product has pretty much unlimited shelf life. But if a consumer thinks about doing a BBQ, the decision depends on a number of factors — such as the day of the week, the weather, and so on. Decision making is ad hoc. The consumer might also stroll through the supermarket, see some fantastic strawberries and impulse purchase them, even though they weren’t on the shopping list. All of this brings uncertainty for the supermarket.

AIPERIA focuses on the fresh and ultra fresh goods, such as bakery, flower, and grab-and-go food — all products with high inherent uncertainty in the forecasts. The company’s solution cleans POS data and delivery data, and combines the data with 150 different factors such as store location, school holidays, day of week, weather (number of sun hours, wind etc), competing local stores, sales promotions, and so on. The algorithm will then tell the supermarket to for example order exactly 40 pretzels to maximize profits. ‘Just like a weather forecast, we can transmit order forecasts 2 weeks prior, and the forecast gets more accurate the closer to the target date; our forecasts are above 90% accurate’, Franz explains.

AIPERIA’s customers typically see a reduction in food waste of up to 1/3. This can save €1,200 per month for a single bakery store — which is very significant. The customers pay between €45 and €90 per month for the SaaS solution, depending on the number of products in the assortment.

The company has 2,500 stores under contract; all are in Germany, although AIPERIA is now expanding to Austria, Switzerland, and the U.K. The company believes there’s a $10B market for the kind of solution it offers.

AIPERIA has 60 FTEs and recently closed a €7.5M Series A round, led by ETF Partners.

Franz is interested in talking to potential customers, ‘like a Head of Supply Chain for Sainsburys or Lidl UK’. He’s also eager to chat with manufacturers or producers, such as huge industrial bakeries that deliver to the food retail sector. And he wants to get a better grasp of the key events focused on food retail in different markets, where AIPERIA can present itself and meet decision makers. Franz can be reached via email and LinkedIn.

Noteworthy

• Prolific Machines of Emeryville, California has banked $55M in Series B1 funding, as it aims to improve biomanufacturing of cultivated meats, pharmaceuticals, nutritional and therapeutic medicines. In a twist to optogenetics, the company has built a photo molecular biology platform, which uses light to grow and control cells; this approach significantly reduces the costs of producing the above mentioned ingredients. The company says its tech can shape and influence ‘virtually any cell function in any cell type’. Investors in the round included Ki Tua Fund of New Zealand, as well as e.g. Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Footprint Coalition Ventures, SOSV, and In-Q-Tel.

• Evodia Bio of Copenhagen, Denmark, which uses fermentation to develop natural aromas that recreate the taste of hops, has bagged 50M DKK (appr. $7.2M) in funding from investors including e.g. Export and Investment Fund of Denmark, Nordic FoodTech VC, PINC, and Thia Ventures.

• Hawaii-based Symbrosia has secured a $1.2M USDA grant to boost production and processing of Asparagopsis taxiformis, a seaweed feed supplement given to cattle to reduce enteric methane emissions.

• AgriG8 of Singapore has raised an undisclosed sum from Better Bite Ventures and The Trendlines Group. The company has developed CropPal, a gamified digital platform that help rice farmers cut methane emissions by up to 55%.

• Researchers at the University of Waterloo in Canada have developed an AI model that analyzes videos of persons eating, detecting each spoonful of food consumed. The model then estimates the volume of food on the spoon, with 96% accuracy. The researchers hope to eventually teach the model to identify the exact food and nutritional content consumed, as this could help people track their calorie intake (note to self: I think the only thing 2024 was lacking, is a judgmental AI tracking what you eat):

• Cultivated meat startup SciFi Foods will cease operations due to a lack of funding. Founded in 2019 as Artemys Foods, the company aimed to produce hybrid burger of plant-based ingredients and cultivated beef to reach price parity with conventional beef, Vegconomist writes.

• Pairwise of the U.S. has developed ‘world’s first’ seedless blackberry using CRISPR. The company also edited the berries to be thornless and more compact, which is beneficial for harvesters and growers — and they see potential for higher yields without much additional use of inputs, too (side note: I interviewed Dr. Haven Baker, co-founder of Pairwise, for my old podcast in 2021 — it’s still relevant!)

• U.S. retail sales of oat milk hit $695M last year, up 28% from 2021. Oat farmers are struggling to keep up with demand.

• Norwegian land-based salmon farming company Salmon Evolution, which has developed a hybrid flow-through system (HFS) to minimize operational and biological risks, has partnered with Swedish company Korshags to bring its salmon to Swedish retail. Salmon Evolution aims to eventually produce 100,000 tons per year.

• Precision agriculture machinery producer and importer Homburg of the Netherlands has acquired Swedish AgTech robot startup Ekobot. The company has developed autonomous ag robot Ekobot WEAI which can keep a field of e.g. onions free of weeds, without herbicides.

News from the FoodTech Weekly community

• revyve (Netherlands) is hiring a Financial Director… Revo Foods (Austria) is looking for an Industrial Ph.D.

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

Random Stuff

• Visualizing daily protein sources by region (h/t Steve S):

• The Spanish city of Valencia is planning to install thousands of solar panels in graveyards around a city, in a project called RIP, Requiem in Power, aiming to become the largest urban solar farm in the country (note: I feel there’s a lost opportunity here to call the project ‘Over My Dead Body’).

​I love you.
Daniel

- - -

This issue was produced while listening to Something Just Like This by The Chainsmokers and Coldplay. 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.