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FoodTech Weekly #203 by Daniel S. Ruben
News on FoodTech, food, and society
Daniel S. Ruben
June 28, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 15 minutes
FoodTech Weekly #203
Hi there,
NECTAR just launched it’s initial body of work, the “Taste of the Industry 2024” report. This is the world’s largest publicly available sensory analysis of plant-based meats, surveying 1,150 omnivores across 150K+ data points. What’s novel here is the analysis benchmarks how plant-based products in retail taste today, and how they can be improved to meet and exceed consumer expectations. The analysis showed that for some categories like nuggets, plant-based products have already achieved or surpassed taste parity. In those cases, the report suggests companies to focus on reducing price and increasing distribution.
In October, NECTAR plans to launch the largest-ever sensory analysis of blended products.
There has been much chatter around the demise of plant-based alternatives. And many startups in this space have closed in the past 1-2 years. VCs in the space have struggled too. Leading alternative protein investor Blue Horizon (with portfolio companies such as e.g. Beyond Meat, Impossible, JUST, Geltor, Motif, Mosa Meat, New Roots, Planted, and Every, just to mention a few) for example recently decided to divest its entire portfolio of 50+ companies where it holds minority positions — instead Blue Horizon will shift to e.g. producing plant-based alternatives in Abu Dhabi under the brand NUOS (quite the pivot).
But, as Lisa Keefe of Alt-Meat and Meatingplace observes in this excellent article, the obituaries for alt meat are premature.
This week's rundown:
Denmark imposes world-first carbon tax on agriculture to help cut emissions
Mercado Diferente of Brazil bags $1.6M to boost sales of ugly organic produce
Are llama golf caddies the next hot thing?
Let's go!
Conversations
I’ve followed New School Foods in Toronto, Canada for a few years, so I was glad to recently have a chance to chat with its founder, Chris Bryson. Chris previously started a software company called Unata back in 2011 which was an eCommerce platform for grocery chains to sell their groceries online and run their digital customer experiences. After having grown that startup to 100 employees and profitability, the company was acquired by Instacart.
Chris says: ‘I originally just thought I’d sell my company, create a nest egg, and maybe do passion projects for the rest of my life.’
But then he learnt about factory farming, and he felt it was one of the biggest problems that not enough people were tackling. So he got involved as angel investor in alt protein companies: ‘In 2018-2020, everyone was chasing the bandwagon, Chris notes and continues: ‘And everyone was encouraging the “fail fast, iterate quickly” mindset. But strategies that work in software don’t work in food. If you serve me shitty food, I will not give you a second chance.’
Chris felt the plant-based meat industry was lacking in R&D spend and overly dependent on a tiny tool kit — including extrusion, which he believed wouldn’t be sufficient to create the next generation of alternatives. So he put out a call for proposals, and funded six projects for 12 months at leading food science universities focused on new food processing technologies. One of the projects developed a novel food structuring method using directional freezing. Chris and the team patented the innovation, and established New School Foods in 2021.
The company develops whole-cut plant-based seafood including a highly realistic plant based filet of salmon with the same texture, taste, nutrition and cooking experience. ‘Our product looks like raw meat, but also cooks and transforms like regular meat. This is important, because behavior change becomes easier if the customer doesn’t feel like they’re giving something up’, Chris explains.
New School Foods salmon
The salmon product is made from e.g. agar (extracted from algae), potato protein (‘for the nice brown/orange color’), and algal oil, and contains the same levels of omega-3 and iron as a conventional salmon.
New School aims to eventually use its technology for B2B partnerships to enable whole-cuts for other brands - in seafood or beyond.
‘When you bring the product to a chef, they feel it’s magic. They never thought plants could do this. When you create an experience that delights people, it makes things easier. Creating a “wow” experience is so important in this industry’, Chris observes.
New School, which today has a team of 25 people, has moved into a pilot facility and hopes to launch pretty soon. The company has raised about $15M so far, about half of which has been non-dilutive funding.
New School Foods is eager to meet chefs in the U.S. and Canada (but also Europe) interested in trying out the product. Chris is always interested in chatting with investors, and Chris also wants to speak to B2B companies looking for plant-based whole cuts. He can be reached via email (‘I’m terrible on every other channel aside from email!’).
New School Foods (Chris in the fourth row, far left)
Noteworthy
Denmark has decided — as the first country to do so — to introduce a tax on carbon emissions from agriculture to meet its climate goals. The country is a major meat and dairy exporter, and ag emissions are forecast to amount to 46% of Denmark’s emissions by 2030. Farmers will have to pay an ever-steeper price for emitting CO2e, starting at DKK 300 (appr. €40) per ton emitted in 2030, rising to DKK 750 (appr. €100) by 2035 onwards. The Danish government will provide €5B+ in funding to help reforest 250K hectares of agricultural land, and buy out certain farms to reduce nitrogen emissions.
Cellivate Technologies of Singapore, which develops solutions related to cultivated meat, may receive up to $3.3M in funding after having won Channel News Asia’s business reality show, The Big Spark.
Argentinian AgTech company Kilimo has bagged $7.5M in fresh Series A funding, in a round led by Emerald Technology Ventures and backed by e.g. The Yield Lab Latam and Kamay Ventures. In short, the company helps e.g. farmers reduce the use of irrigation water in their fields.
Mercado Diferente of Brazil has secured $1.6M in pre-Series A funding led by Collaborative Fund, and joined by Caravela Capital. The company provides a subscription service for discount organic items that don’t meet aesthetic standards but are perfectly healthy. Mercado Diferente will use the new funding to invest in e.g. its distribution center.
Korean automotive company Hyundai’s Robotic Lab has revealed a new robot called DAL-e that will deliver food and bev inside office complexes. The new robot is said to have a 99.9% accuracy rate.
Electronic shelf labels are becoming more prevalent in supermarkets, providing a new avenue to quickly lower prices of products close to their expiration dates.
Bezos Earth Fund will launch a new Center for Sustainable Protein at Imperial College, with $30M in funding, to help transform global food systems. This follows an announcement just weeks ago where the Fund launched a similar $30M center in North Carolina. In somewhat related news, Singapore has granted $14.8M to University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign to launch a center for precision fermentation in Singapore.
Swedish land-based aquaculture company Big Akwa has reeled in SEK 6M (appr. $0.6M) in funding — a mix of debt, equity, and grants. The company is proceeding with its plans to build a facility with an annual capacity of 6,000 tons of fish.
Big Akwa
Precision fermentation startup Immobazyme of South Africa has nabbed $1.3M in funding from the University Technology Fund and Innovus (University of Stellenbosch Enterprises).
Nave Analytics of Nebraska, U.S. has harvested a $400K round from e.g. Invest Nebraska, Husker Venture Fund and Nebraska Angels Capital Group. The company provides tools for ag producers to make data-driven decisions about water use, e.g. by understanding the soil water content in a specific field.
Israeli FoodTech startup Better Juice has expanded its sugar-reduction technology to lower the sugar loads in fruit sorbets by 50-70%, and calories by 40%.
News from the FoodTech Weekly community
U.K. based alt-protein pet food startup THE PACK, which specializes in premium proteins for dogs, have have opened early access to their first equity crowdfunding campaign, where you can join e.g. Mars Petcare as an investor. More about THE PACK’s cofounders (who also co-founded e.g. Vevolution) here.
Kamil Węgliński of Market One Capital Corner has written an excellent piece on how tech can help cut food waste. To dive even deeper, check out this World Resources Institute food loss and waste overview. In related news, the U.S. has become the latest country to set national food waste policies, after e.g. China, the U.K., and France.
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Random Stuff
Denmark recalled Korean ramen for being too spicy (here’s why water doesn’t help with spicy food).
How scientists make bread that can last months without going bad.
The number of animals killed to produce one ton of meat is inversely correlated with the the greenhouse gas emissions of producing that meat:
Our World In Data
Royal Mail has issued an apology for delays caused by aggressive seagulls.
New sanctions caused a payment failure for Russian bots on Twitter using ChatGPT 4 and the result was pretty obvious.
Eight-year-old pekingese Wild Thang was just crowned World Ugliest Dog:
Llama golf caddies are now a thing in North Carolina. Says Mark English, who has trained 30 of his llamas to carry the clubs: ‘Lightning is the world’s nicest llama […] He’s the Snugglemaster 2000 — give him a big hug.’
I love you.
Daniel
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This issue was produced while listening to Makeba by Jain. Follow me on LinkedIn and Twitter. Did your brilliant friend forward this to you? Subscribe here.