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- FoodTech Weekly #218 by Daniel S. Ruben
FoodTech Weekly #218 by Daniel S. Ruben
News on FoodTech, food, and society
Daniel S. Ruben
October 18, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 12 minutes
FoodTech Weekly #218
Hi there,
Last week I asked where you readers work. Of 2,900 subscribers, 112 of you responded. At a 95% confidence level, I think that’s a 9% margin of error (statistics was never my strongest subject — sorry, Prof. Patel at Georgetown!). Anyways, here’s the findings:
Some 41% of FoodTech Weekly readers work in startups, 20% work as investors, 10% work in NGOs/non-profits, 9% in corporates, 4% are students or in academia, and 14% are “Other” (e.g. consultants, in media, etc). So 60%+ of you work in startups or on the investment side, which I think justifies not only writing a lot about FoodTech startups and funding, but also adding the highlights of the Investment Climate podcast, to help shed light on how startups manage to raise funding.
I was recently interviewed by French Food + Tech, where I e.g. revealed my first ever real job (if you like the interview, give them a follow here).
The FoodCons just released their annual list of the 99+1 people shaping global FoodTech. I’m proud to say I was included, mainly because the list contains so many fantastic FoodTech entrepreneurs. For me, entrepreneurs are the true heroes. Without them, many of the rest of us (investors, mentors, journalists, employees, etc) wouldn’t have a job.
This week's rundown:
💵 Blue Stripes bags $20M to upcycle cocoa sidestrams into new valuable products
💩 Sistema.bio banks $15M for biodigesters that valorize animal waste in LMICs
🤨 EU diplomats wants to counteract the decline in EU alcohol consumption
Let's go!
💬 Conversation with Jaakko Kaminen of SuperGround
“I’m from the Texas of Finland — Seinäjoki, Pohjanmaa. I’m a fourth generation entrepreneur. My upbringing is that entrepreneurship is hard and will kill you, and you should be proud of it," says Jaakko Kaminen, CEO of SuperGround.
SuperGround has invented a machine that can turn side streams such as fish and poultry bones into a smooth, sterile and tasty paste with high nutritional value — and then use this paste to make e.g. fish sticks, chicken nuggets, and so on. Read the full conversation here.
Jaakko Kaminen / SuperGround
💰 Funding
🇨🇭 Planetary has secured a CHF 3M (appr. $3.4M) investment from Cosun; the company develops food ingredients through fermentation, and will collaborate with Cosun on e.g. commercializing mycoprotein.
🇺🇸 In related news, biomanufacturing startup Liberation Labs announced $3.5M in new funding via a Secured Promissory Note, including $2M from the VC Agronomics. The company plans to open a facility in Indiana Q1 2025 with 600K liters of fermentation capacity.
🇺🇸 Biopesticides provider AgroSpheres has raised $37M in Series B funding, led by Zebra Impact Ventures.
🇨🇭 Sallea, which makes edible, plant-based scaffolds for e.g. the cultivated meat industry has bagged €2.4M (appr. $2.6M) in a round led by Founderful and joined by Kost Capital.
🇺🇸 Blue Stripes, which upcycles cocoa sidestreams into e.g. cacao water, whole-cacao granola, and trail mix, has scored $20M in Series B funding, led by ZINTINUS and joined by e.g. Hershey’s and Whole Foods.
Blue Stripes
🇪🇸 UOBO has snapped up €500K (appr. $540K) in Seed funding, led by Enzo Ventures, for its liquid plant-based egg replacer.
🇲🇽 Sistema.bio has closed a $15M bridge round led by ElectriFi and backed by e.g. AXA Investment Managers, KawiSafi Ventures, and Blink VC. The company makes biodigesters that smallholder farmers use to recycle animal waste into biofuel for cooking, heating, electrification, and nutrient rich fertilizer. The company has deployed 100K units on small farms in 35 countries in LATAM, Africa, and India, cutting more than 1M tons of CO2e per year.
🇫🇷 moderato 0% was just fois gras’d with €3M (appr. $3.25M) in funding from Eutopia, Groupe Coopératif Vivadour, Andromede, and Xinomavro Ventures. The company develops alcohol-free French wines.
🎙️ Investment Climate: Arne Ewerbeck of Raging Pig shares how to get funded in 2024
In this episode (available on Spotify and Apple), Alex talks to Arne, Co-Founder of The Raging Pig Company, a Hamburg-based FoodTech startup focused on developing and distributing alt pork products. Their current offerings include a wide range of plant-based German sausages and bacon, with plans to expand into other products and mycelium-based options. Raging Pig just closed a Seed round.
Three top findings from this conversation:
Measure Your Market, Going Bottom To Top: ‘From the bottom to the top, how many plant-based sausages were sold last year? Because that is the market’, says Arne.
Your Brand Doesn't Need To Be Provocative. Arne highlighted that ‘there's no reason for us to be provocative towards a company which is producing pork products. That's something which we are not doing. We already have a brand which gets a lot of attention anyway. We don't need to point our fingers at somebody else.’
Be a brand that offers an experience. ‘Everybody has a very clear description of what they would expect. No matter how good the product tastes, the consumer would always look for the experience of having a sausage. So when it comes to how the product works, texture, taste, mouthfeel, what happens with the sausage after you grilled it, for example. All of these properties, you need to address. What the consumer cares about, other than the price and the taste, is they want to be entertained.” Arne adds.
Investment Climate
🧐 Noteworthy
🍫 In January 2025, Voyage Foods will open an almost 300k sq. ft (appr. 26K sq. m). factory in Mason, Ohio which will churn out 10K tons of cocoa-free chocolate every year.
🛑 California is banning plastic bags at grocery stores.
🍯 How honey fingerprinting can prevent food fraud.
🤩 A Swedish innovation project, The Mineral Shift, led by Axfoundation, MatLust Utvecklingsnod, Hidden in Grains and Warbro Kvarn, has optimized the technique of hydrothermal processing, making minerals such as iron and zinc in grains more available for the human body to absorb. The technique is now being tested on a large scale with products such as bulgur made from barley.
📉 Executive search firm True has done a deepdive in FoodTech and AgTech, finding that ‘rising costs of capital, a tighter funding environment, and a lack of successful exits have created a challenging landscape for early and growth-stage companies.’
Image source: True
🍨 The secret alchemy of making ice cream.
🚜 A new survey by the Illinois Center for Digital Agriculture has found that more than half of corn farmers would adopt weeding robots, in the light of declining efficacy of herbicides.
🥀 Startup Tiamat Sciences have ceased operations, citing financial constraints.
🍲 On Farma, an (fictive) innovative GMO and FoodTech-friendly restaurant in San Francisco that embrace everything from cell cultured and precision fermented foods, to Golden Rice and papaya resistant to viral pests. Worth reading!
🧮 Ariel Patton of Topsoil has written a fantastic article on ag napkin math, and also built a very helpful cheat sheet. Excerpt below:
Ariel Patton / Topsoil
🌍 News from the FoodTech Weekly community
👨🏻💻 BlueRedGold (Sweden) is hiring for several roles incl. CCO and Head of Production & Automation… NitroCapt (Sweden) is looking for an Industrial Business Analyst intern... Nutreco’s (Netherlands) corporate VC arm is recruiting an Investment Director.
🏆 Nominate AgriFoodTech startups for the next edition of The FoodTech 500 here.
🔖 Synthesis launched a new report (last month) called ‘AgTech for Reducing GHG Emissions’.
Want to share some FoodTech news/project with other FoodTech Weekly subscribers? Hit reply.
🎲 Random Stuff
🍷 YouTuber tries to ferment Monster Energy into wine:
🥴 Speaking about wine, I have so many questions about this:
🗳️ Global voter turnout has risen for the first time in 20 years.
🧑🏾🌾 How farming spread into Europe up to 3,800 BCE (h/t Azeem Azhar).
I love you.
Daniel
- - -
🎵 This issue was produced while listening to Lost Horse by Asaf Avidan
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