FoodTech Weekly #206 by Daniel S. Ruben

FoodTech Weekly #206

Hi there,

I really should take a summer break from FoodTech Weekly soon. But it’s too much fun to write. Having that said, if I don’t publish next week, don’t be surprised 😀

This week's rundown:

• NovoNutrients nets $18M to turn CO2 into protein for food and feed

• Meatly gains U.K. regulatory approval for cultivated chicken pet food

• How to get rich from looking into people’s fridges

Let's go!

Conversations

Recently I had a chance to speak with Niya Gupta of Fork & Good. Niya was born in India, grew up in Hong Kong, and spent her childhood summers on the family farm in India. ‘I became obsessed with how we produced food; I felt it was unsustainable in terms of farmer income, planetary income, and more — I was shocked’, Niya remembers.

She spent 15 years working in ag, at the World Bank, McKinsey, and Syngenta, helping make supply chains become more resilient (she somehow also found the time to do a BA in economics at Yale and a dual MBA/MPAID at Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School). Niya became an agtech investor, and then co-founded her first company, ComCrop, which does hydroponic rooftop farming in Singapore. She heard about cultivated meat but was skeptical; ‘I felt it was guilt free meat for the 1%’, Niya says. After modeling out cultivated meat and doing a techno economic analysis, she decided to establish cultivated meat startup Fork & Good in early 2019 together with Gabor Forgacs.

‘The existing meat supply chain is being negatively impacted. Meat companies and meat retailers are already feeling the effects of not enough land and water, and experience a lot of volatility in price and quality. African Swine Fever alone knocked out a quarter of global pork production and we still haven’t recovered 100%. So these companies want controllable processes end to end. They can blend our cultivated meat into their products. Functionally it works the same’, Niya explains.

She says costs keep coming down, meaning Fork & Good’s cultivated meat will be cheaper than conventional meat, and notes:

‘I’m coming from farming. I don’t think livestock is going anywhere. The only way cultivated meat becomes interesting is if there’s a big delta of improvement and it is more efficient. Incremental doesn’t work. Our product is not a total replacement for livestock. It’s a climate adaptable way to grow meat, and keep meat affordable.’

Fork & Good uses a non-pharma bioreactor that the company customized, which is capable of continuous processing and harvesting, allowing a smaller tank size, and thus smaller CAPEX. ‘For our commercial facilities we only need to go to 1,000 liter bioreactors, because our yield is 10x what others get. Our facilities will be 90% cheaper to build than those of our peers’, Niya says.

Fork & Good will offer two products; one will be a blend of 50% cultivated meat and plant-based proteins, to get to something similar as ground beef and ground pork, to use in dumplings, tacos, meat sauces etc. The other product will be to combine the company’s cultivated meat with conventional meat. Both models will be B2B.

Niya says the company could already sell its product at a positive gross margin, and that the company has joint development agreements in place with multi billion dollar meat companies. What’s holding Fork & Good back is the regulatory factor, but here Niya believes the approval will happen sometime between late 2025 and mid 2026.

Fork & Good, which has secured $22M so far, is currently raising a Series A+ round joined by e.g. True Ventures and Leaps by Bayer; it is already 80% committed. The company is also always eager to speak to food companies and chefs interested in their products, especially in the U.S. Fork & Good also wants to talk to experts in dairy safety standards, and to chat with talent focused on manufacturing, such as food safety persons deeply rooted in science. Niya can be reached via LinkedIn.

Noteworthy

• NovoNutrients of California has brought home $18M in Series A funding, led by Woodside Energy and CM Venture Capital. The company uses microbes to upcycle industrial CO2 waste into a sustainable protein used for food as well as animal feed.

• French startup Nutriearth — which uses insects to enhance flours and oils for human consumption as well as ingredients for animal feed with vitamin D3 —has scored €8M (appr. $8.7M) in fresh funding (h/t DigitalFoodLab)

• Biotech startup Digestiva of Davis, California has hauled in a $18.4M Series A funding round led by (global sugar cane processor) Magdalena, and joined by UC Investment, The March Fund, and Astanor. Digestiva’s innovation enhances protein bioavailability, allowing people and animals to ‘maximize nutritional benefits from existing diets without increasing protein consumption’.

• Mitti Labs (HQ’ed in NYC and with a subsidiary in Bengaluru, India) has harvested $3M in funding from e.g. Lightspeed Ventures Partners and Voyager Ventures, to help rice farmers in India improve farming practices while cutting methane emissions.

• U.K. based Meatly will begin selling its cultivated chicken meat to manufacturers as early as this year, after the U.K. just became the first country in Europe to provide regulatory approval for cultivated chicken for use in pet food.

• Swedish mycoprotein producer Mycorena has filed for bankruptcy, after facing financial headwinds. It aims to restructure under new ownership. The company had raised €35M (appr. $38M) in several subsequent rounds of funding.

• Singapore just approved 16 insect species for human food and animal feed consumption, a boon to the country’s insect as food and feed ecosystem.

• Canadian vertical farming company Fieldless Farms (which previously had raised $20M+) has secured funding through SOFII, the Southern Ontario Fund for Investment in Innovation. While the amount is unknown, SOFII program funding ranges from CAD $150K to CAD $500K.

• Natural Ventures of Abu Dhabi and the Netherlands has closed its inaugural fund with $100M in commitments, aiming to invest to advance sustainability in global food and water. Meanwhile, VC firm Cultivation Capital has launched a new $20M AgTech investment fund.

• Canadian AgTech startup Ceragen has raised CAD $2.7M (appr. $2M) in Seed funding; the company develops soil microbes that are supplied to the roots of plants to help boost crop yields.

News from the FoodTech Weekly community

• New School Foods (Canada) has a number of open roles… GFI Europe (BE/FR/DE/NL/ES/UK) is hiring a Donor Engagement Officer.

• Forward Fooding has opened for early-bird applications for the 2024 FoodTech 500. Apply or nominate here.

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

Random Stuff

• There are now vending machines in Alabama and Oklahoma selling ammo for guns and rifles (video here).

• The 101-year old scientist who developed the first blight-resistant tomato (beautiful little story in WaPo).

• Pittsburgh-startup Skild AI has bagged a $300M (!) Series A round, at a $1.5B valuation, led by Jeff Bezos, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Coatue, and SoftBank Group. The startup, which was founded last year (! again) has developed a cool robot software that features embodied intelligence, meaning it can learn and react to the outside world on its own.

• Getting rich from peeping inside people’s fridges.

​I love you.
Daniel

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This issue was produced while listening to What’s Done is Done by Offer Nissim and Arik Einstein. 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.