FoodTech Weekly #202 by Daniel S. Ruben

FoodTech Weekly #202

Hi there,

I’m still buzzing with excitement from last week’s HackSummit in Lausanne. Sonalie Figueiras of Green Queen did a great job summarizing that event. ICYMI, the next HackSummit will happen in NYC on Dec 12-13.

Another event I’m looking forward to is The Drop in Malmo, Sweden on Sept 17, where I’ll host a roundtable with Gil Horsky of FLORA Ventures. You can apply for tickets for The Drop here.

This news is interesting — European FoodTech companies raised more VC capital than U.S. and Asian startups in 2023, according to a new report from Foodlabs and Dealroom (the report is great both in terms of design and content; worth reading and even skimming!)

This week's rundown:

• U.K. plant-based alternatives company THIS harvests £20M Series C

• Agroloop builds large factory for insects-as-feed in Hungary

• How much Spam can you bring on a flight? Superfans are finding out

Let's go!

Conversations

Met Mikkel Precht of Alcolase when I was in Copenhagen a few weeks ago. His background is in molecular biomedicine; he did his BSc and MSc at Copenhagen University on this topic. ‘COVID locked down society; me and my cofounders were frustrated with all the free time that we suddenly had. When we celebrated my friend Jeppe’s bachelor degree — in his basement because society was shut down — we started discussing how we could use our bioscience knowledge to do something important and solve something big’, Mikkel recalls, and adds: ‘Alcohol intolerance impacts a lot of people, mainly in East Asia — hundreds of millions of people in places like Japan, Korea, and China’.

Alcohol intolerance happens in a gene called ALDH2, making it impossible for the body to break down the alcohol, so the body will experience symptoms like nausea, flushing, and asthma attacks.

Alcolase has developed a product which helps people with alcohol intolerance. It’s inspired by how the human body breaks down alcohol; an enzyme called alcohol dehydrogenase breaks it down into acetaldehyde (a toxic compound). Then, the acetaldehyde is further broken down into acetate which enters metabolism as an energy source. The Alcolase enzyme system uses different enzymes, but the reaction follows similar steps. 

‘Our product, which will come as a form of small hydrogel or shot that you drink, goes into the stomach, where it will break down the alcohol there before it even gets to your bloodstream. That way, you can drink an alcoholic beer and experience it as if it’s a low alcohol or no alcohol beer. It’s similar to how lactose intolerant people take a lactase pill, Mikkel explains.

The company’s goal is that when a consumer takes one dose of Alcolase, this will allow that person to drink moderately — maybe 1-2 glasses of wine — and avoid the side effects like getting drunk or other symptoms.

Alcolase has found a way to protect its magic enzyme so that it stays active and stable in the stomach; Mikkel believes they are the first in the world to be doing what they’re doing (and they’re patenting it).

‘We hope we’ll be part of changing the focus of drinking a glass of wine from the alcohol, to the taste. Humanity has spent thousands of years refining e.g. beer and wine. We want to allow people to enjoy e.g. wine for the taste and experience, not to get drunk. We hope to reduce the amount of alcohol-related diseases, and also to empower people with alcohol intolerance to feel more included’, Mikkel says.

Alcolase hopes to be on the market with its product in late 2026, starting in South Korea. Then other markets will follow, likely China, Japan, the U.S. and eventually the EU. ‘We think that if every person with alcohol intolerance uses Alcolase every other time they go out for a drink, that represents a $100B market’, Mikkel states.

The company, which has 4 co-founders, a researcher, and 4 interns in the lab and on the business side, is looking to hire a CCO and another full-time researcher.

Alcolase is currently raising a €1.5M round, and is looking for a lead investor with expertise in synbio, biotech, and/or FoodTech to lead the round. The company is also eager to connect with founders within functional foods and synbio FoodTech — to learn best practice on how to bring a product to market. Mikkel can be reached via email (better!) and LinkedIn.

Noteworthy

• U.K. plant-based meat startup THIS has banked £20M (appr. $25M) in Series C funding, led by Planet First Partners.

• Israeli cultivated meat company Ever After Foods has secured $10M in funding from U.S. and EU strategic investors, as well as from Tnuva Group of Israel. Ever After claims it has developed a bioreactor platform that can produce cultivated foods with ‘unmatched’ cost-efficient scalability.

• Tender Foods of Somerville, Massachusetts (and formerly doing business as Boston Meats) has scored $11M in Series A funding for its plant-based meats. The company uses a fiber-spinning process similar to making cotton candy to turn plant protein into structured cuts of meat, such as steak, chicken breast, and seafood. The A round was led by Rhapsody Venture Partners and joined by e.g. Lowercarbon Capital and Safar Partners.

• Farmbot of Sydney, Australia has bagged $4.6M in new funding, from e.g. Telstra and Macdoch Ventures. The company has developed an IoT platform that e.g. monitors water and gives farmers the ability to control their infrastructure remotely.

• Netherlands company Vahl brothers (Gebroeders Vahl) has installed the world’s first robot sorting and packing line for cucumbers; the system records the shape, thickness, length, and weight of each cucumber, and 7 robots then sort the cucumbers into the right crates. The sorting line can do 20k cucumbers per hour or 140k per day at full capacity — and the number of people needed for sorting and packing has fallen from 15 to just 6, Future Farming reports.

• Agroloop of Hungary has built a Black Soldier Fly production facility outside Budapest, which will turn insects into animal feed. The company has raised €20M (about $21M) in funding so far.

• Israeli microalgae producer Brevel has secured an almost NIS 1.5M (appr. $0.4M) grant from Israel Innovation Authority. The company can produce proteins and functional lipids from microalgae.

• What happened to obesity in Chile after the country killed off Tony the Tiger?

• Collaborative Fund of New York has raised $125M to invest in early-stage climate, health, and food.

• Swedish indoor vertical farming company Ljusgårda has entered a power purchase agreement (PPA) Svea Solar, re. 8 GWh per year from a 13 hectare agrivoltatics park (a solar park in ag fields that produce rapeseed, ley, and wheat). This will more than cover Ljusgårda’s annual energy needs.

• Antibiotics are still being used by some farmers to fatten up pigs in the U.S., even though the practice has been banned since 2017.

• A proposed bill to help cut down plastic waste was just struck down in the New York legislature.

• Bats are efficient in combating orchard pests.

News from the FoodTech Weekly community

• Planet A Foods (Germany) is looking for a Social Media Manager… Volta Greentech is hiring a Senior Product Developer… Fermify (Austria) has an open role for a Downstream Engineer… Koa (Germany) is on the hunt for a Category Manager.

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

Random Stuff

• Beer as a wellness trend.

• The U.S. meat industry is stepping up political spending and lobbying.

• Electric buses were 26% of global bus sales in 2023.

• How much Spam can you take on a plane? Some superfans have tested the limits.

• A St. Louis restaurant has banned diners under the age of 30.

• ‘Teen Boys Are Chewing 'Facial-Fitness Gum' to Get Chiseled Jaws’ (h/t Marie Dollé).

• From the FoodTech Weekly Discord’s meme channel:

​I love you.
Daniel

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This issue was produced while listening to Hoppípolla 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.