FoodTech Weekly #213 by Daniel S. Ruben

FoodTech Weekly #213

Hi there,

Inspired by bold corporate commitments and thoughtleader stories of personal leadership, I’m thrilled to share that I have set an ambitious goal to achieve zero net personal greenhouse gas emissions by 2045.

Also, I will be flying to London for 🔥THE HEAT next week, and then to Dubai for Gulfood Green’s Food For Future Summit the week after that (and in December to HackSummit NYC — use FOODTECHWEEKLY20 for 20% off).

(But first it’s off to The Drop in Malmö on Monday — by train).

Speaking about The Drop, I’m hosting a roundtable there with Gil Horsky (FLORA Ventures) on ‘Food: The Untapped Climate Opportunity’. That feeling when 120+ people have tried to sign up for just 18 spots…

A correction: Last week I wrote about La Bonnotte potatoes being more expensive than wagyu beef, and FTW reader Benjamin Bach had this to say:

“Sadly, let's not fantasize too much on Normoutiers farmers becoming millionaires with their potatoes...The myth of the most expensive potato apparently comes from the sale of a 5kg batch at auction house Drouot in 1996 where it was auctioned to a chef for appr. €2.5K — he wanted to make a marketing coup in his restaurant by paying more than for truffles...But this is really only a one-off; these days a kg of these potatoes gets sold for about €8-10/kg which is expensive for potatoes but nowhere near Wagyu beef prices...[…] Journalist fantasies but on the other hand readers love good stories!”

Thank you Benjamin!

This week's rundown:

🥯 Formo was just foie gras’d with a $61M Series B; will bring micro fermented cheese to market
🪲 Solasta and Catalera hauls in big funding rounds to fight pests using green methods
🍍 Why placing exotic fruits upside down at Spanish food retailer Mercadona at 7pm can lead to exciting outcomes

Let's go!

💬 Conversation with Ines Sánchez-Castillo of Beans

“When Louis and I started working on the company, I made a LinkedIn post saying we were founding something in the FoodTech space, and I wrote that ‘we’re not ready to spill the beans’. The post went viral. We got contacted by 80 VCs after that post, which was crazy.”

This is why Ines Sánchez-Castillo and Louis Paulet decided to call their new company Beans. The startup was founded to address food waste in retail, which is driven by e.g. overproduction, short-shelf life, seasonality, supply chain issues, package changes, and more. Read on to learn more about Beans and their ambitious growth plans.

💰 Funding

🇩🇪 Formo has banked the third-largest alt-protein funding round in Europe in 2024, by bagging a $61M Series B, backed by e.g. FoodLabs, EQT Ventures, Lowercarbon Capital, The Nature Conservancy, and Rewe Group. The company uses a type of Koji mould to produce (through micro fermentation) animal-free cheeses similar to dairy-based cheeses, and is now launching its products across 2K+ supermarkets in Germany.

🇪🇸 Novameat, producer of texturized plant-based meats (think e.g. steaks), has closed a €17.4M (appr. $19.3M) Series A round, led by Sofinnova and Forbion Bioeconomy, and supported by existing investors Unovis, Rubio Impact Ventures, and Praesidium.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Solasta Bio, which develops nature-inspired bioinsecticides (rather than synthetic chemical control agents) has nabbed $14M in fresh funding in a round led by Forbion, FMC Ventures and Corteva, and backed by e.g. Rubio Impact Ventures and Scottish Enterprise. In related news, Catalera Solutions (🇨🇦) has pulled in a Series A round to further develop its biological pest control solution.

🇦🇺 Number 8 Bio has harvested A$7M (appr. US $4.6M) in funding; the company develops methane reduction feed additives for cattle. Investors in the round include Main Sequence, Breakthrough Victoria, and The March Group.

🇸🇪 Foodtel, which can calculate remaining shelf life and link it to expiry dates and temperature deviations in the food chain has scored a SEK 15M (appr. $1.45M) funding round from Novax and angel Anders Frankel.

🇺🇸 Switch Bioworks has landed $17M from e.g. Change Forces Capital, Grantham Foundation, Astanor Ventures, Acre Venture Partners and Emerson Collective. The company engineers symbiotic, nitrogen-fixing microbes that live on plant roots to replace conventional fertilizer, a solution that Switch Bioworks says is carbon-neutral and lower-cost.

🇦🇺 Cropify has raked in A$2M (appr. US $1.4M) in Seed funding from Mandalay Venture Partners and Hatcher+; the company leverages AI and machine learning to grade grains in the supply chain.

🇩🇰 Cultivated meat startup Meat Tomorrow has netted DKK 4.1M (appr. $600K) from Keystones and Danish Business Angels to expand R&D and build partnerships.

🇬🇧 AgDevCo Ventures has been financed with £25M (appr. $33M) by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office; AgDevCo Ventures will invest in East African agribusinesses.

🇸🇪 Mylla, a marketplace platform which enables smallscale farmers and producers to upload their inventory and sell directly to end consumers, has hauled in SEK 7M (appr. $0.7M) from Planet Zero, business angels, and existing investor Backing Minds.

🧐 Noteworthy

🪦 Motif FoodWorks of Boston, which had raised $345M, has closed down. The company had been engaged in a costly IP battle with Impossible Foods, which was resolved before Motif decided to throw in the towel. Here’s one analysis of the rise and fall of Motif.

⚠️ The British Heart Foundation is calling for cigarette packaging-style warning labels on cans, bottles, and tins of junk food, as well as advertising bans and new taxes for products high in salt and sugar, in an effort to cut the numbers of premature deaths from heart attacks and strokes.

🛑 Danone will stop using the Nutri-Score labels on some of its products after a revision places some of Danone’s dairy and plant-based beverages in the same category as soft drinks.

🍅 Agricultural soils are growing saltier, which is bad news for many crops. Researchers have found a tomato from the deserts of Peru that may contain genetic secrets to salt tolerant crops.

🐄 Backed by $30M, scientists at UC Davis are looking to genetically engineer the cow microbiome to eliminate methane emissions.

♻️ A Houston resident put an Apple AirTag in her recycling to see where her plastic trash was going. The plastic wasn’t sent to a recycling center, but was found in an open-air lot alongside millions of other pieces of trash.

🌍 News from the FoodTech Weekly community

👨🏻‍💻 Xias Bio (Scotland) is hiring a Business Development Manager… Hatch Blue (Germany) is looking for a Founder & CEO for a novel feed ingredients platform… Eatable Adventures (Spain) is seeking an Innovation Consultant - AgriFoodTech sector.

🎤 As mentioned, if you’re planning to go to HackSummit NYC, might as well get a ticket discount — use FOODTECHWEEKLY20 for 20% off.

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

🎲 Random Stuff

🐟 A 10-year-old Japanese girl, Karin Tabira, has become the youngest person ever authorized to prepare fugu pufferfish. The delicacy can kill if its poisonous parts are not properly removed.

🌊 Almost five million individual LEGO pieces were lost into the sea back in 1997; the pieces are still showing up on the coasts of England, Ireland, Belgium, and France. Coincidentally, the lost LEGO pieces were mainly aquatically themed (LEGO Pirates and LEGO Aquazone).

💔 Love advice from divorce lawyers.

🍍 There’s a new dating craze in Spain; young single people visit Mercadona supermarkets at 7pm and place exotic fruits such as a pineapple upside down in their shoppings carts to show they’re eligible. ‘If you find someone you like, and they happen to have their pineapple, you can start to talk,’ 24-year-old Damon Fan in Barcelona says.

​I love you.
Daniel

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🎵 This issue was produced while listening to Dry Your Eyes by The Streets.
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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, HackGroup, 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.