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- FoodTech Weekly #220 by Daniel S. Ruben
FoodTech Weekly #220 by Daniel S. Ruben
News on FoodTech, food, and society
Daniel S. Ruben
November 01, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 12 minutes
FoodTech Weekly #220
Hi there,
I was just interviewed by the FoodTech ecosystem/community legend Sharon Cittone (Edible Planet Ventures, Seeds & Chips, AgriFood-Tech Italia, World Food Programme Italy, etc etc) for her podcast FoodTech Junkies (available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple etc).
We covered a ton of stuff — from startup advisory and angel investing, to True Cost Accounting in the food system, behavioral change, regulatory pressures, food waste, alternative proteins, nutritional quality, and so much more. Give it a listen!🎙️
This week's rundown:
💶 Foodsi hauls in €1.2M for food rescue app used by millions in Poland
🤖 Simbe Robotics scores $50M for in-store robots
🤔 The Japanese village full of eery puppets
Let's go!
💰 Funding
🇫🇷 Hubcycle has closed €15M (appr. $16.3M) in Series A funding from e.g. ETF Partners, Swen, Raise Ventures, Techmind, Daphni, Citizen Capital and Bleu Capital. The company upcycles waste from agrifood processing — such as fruit peels, ugly vegetables, oil pressing residues, too coarse powders etc — into new ingredients such as flours, juices, aromas, and spices, at an average 30% lower cost than that of standard ingredients.
🇵🇱 Foodsi has raised €1.2M (appr. $1.3M) in Seed extension from e.g. AIP Seed, Satus Starter and AC/VC Impact Fund. The company runs an app connecting consumers with restaurants, bakeries, cafes, and convenience stores, allowing people to buy surplus food at up to 70% discounts. Foodsi says it has almost 2M users.
🇫🇮 Business Finland has awarded €10M (appr. $11M) in grants to two Finnish R&D projects, FoodID and FinBioFAB, which will innovate in alternative proteins and lipids, alternative ingredients, and circular economy practices. Vegconomist has more on the specific companies and projects.
🇺🇸 Agtonomy, which develops AI-enabled software that plugs in with equipment manufacturers to make autonomous tractors, has secured an additional $10M to bring its Series A round to $32.8M. Autotech Ventures led the round, which was also joined by new and and existing investors such as e.g. Rethink Food, Toyota Ventures, and Cavallo Partners.
🇺🇸 Simbe Robotics has bagged a $50M Series C led by Goldman Sachs Alternatives and joined by Eclipse and Valo Ventures. Simbe has developed e.g. an aisle-scanning robot that uses computer vision to determine e.g. stock levels and optimize inventory management, in ‘almost’ real-time (here’s a 30 sec video on their Tally robot).
Simbe Robotics
🇦🇺Earthodic has scooped up $4M (AUD $6M) in Seed funding, in a round led by FTW Ventures. The company has developed a water resistant coating called Biobarc derived from bio-based materials. Traditional coatings (e.g. water resistant linings on disposable coffee cups) are next to impossible to recycle; Earthodic claims products using Biobard are much easier to recycle.
🇬🇧 Concert Bio has received £1M (appr. $1.3M) in funding from Innovate UK. The company develops a soil microbiome optimization platforms which boosts productivity and resilience for CEA (controlled environment agriculture) farming, such as greenhouses and vertical farms.
🇺🇸 MeliBio has announced an undisclosed sum in ‘strategic investment’ from Japan’s Future Food Fund by Oisiix as part of its pre-Series A round. The company began as a precision fermentation company focusing on honey, but is currently focused on producing a plant-based sweetener, Mellody, and can churn out 10,000 lbs (appr. 4,500 kgs) of product per day.
🇦🇹🇧🇪 Paleo and Revo Foods have received a €2.2M (appr. $2.4M) grant from the EU Eurostar program, to co-develop an animal-free salmon heme for Revo Foods’ plant-based salmon fillet. Heme, a.k.a. myoglobin, is a protein found in mammalian muscles, and adding non-animal versions of heme to plant-based alternatives to animal-sourced foods make these alternatives taste more similar to the real thing.
🎙️ Investment Climate: Lewis Dunnigan of Bygen on how to get funded in 2024
This week, Alex Shandrovsky spoke to Lewis Dunnigan of Bygen (episode available on Spotify and Apple). Bygen produces sustainable activated carbon, a highly porous material that attracts and absorbs chemicals, gases, odours, and organics, and is used in e.g. food and beverage processing. The company has raised US $2.5M from e.g. Breakfree Victoria, Alberts Impact Capital and Artesian Investments.
The discussion highlights the strategic considerations for startups navigating licensing agreements and the importance of aligning interests between founders, investors, and partner organizations. The emphasis on operational transparency, risk mitigation, and the importance of a strong foundational technology is critical for gaining investor trust and achieving long-term success.
Three top findings from this conversation:
Focus on licensing the technology rather than building on operating production facilities. “Our decision early on to focus on licensing the technology rather than building on operating production facilities enabled us to even be considered a viable investment by a VC because it is a means to grow the company through relatively little investment”, Lewis emphasizes.
Signing-up offtake agreements before production. Lewis said, “We basically sign-up offtake agreements before production plants come online. That's an easier way to sell it. You don't get the same high value as you get by selling it in small quantities. So we sort of keep 95 percent of our offtakes for those types of customers and then we also have some internal sales capabilities to sell smaller amounts at higher prices on the spot market.”
Getting the IP out of the university. “We did manage to get the IP out of the university but it wasn't an easy process. We actually went out and got feedback from the market and said that we don't think that we'll be able to raise money if we license it, sub-license the technology, or if we have the technology but there's significant royalties attached to it. They have equity in the business in return.” Lewis added.
Investment Climate
🧐 Noteworthy
🪦 Why are startups shutting down in droves? Interesting read from Last Money In.
🚨 The U.K. House of Lords has published a report that calls for the government to introduce a junk food ban, as well as higher junk food taxes and stricter requirements on large food companies to cut levels of salt, sugar, and calories in their products.
🌱 New England farmers are participating in what may be the first known field trials of human-urine fertilizer in the U.S.
📈 A new AgFunder report shows African AgriFoodTech startups raised $145.1M in H1 2024 vs. $142.9M in H1 2023, a 1.6% y/o/y increase.
🥛 Arla Foods launched the U.K.’s first free milk ATM in London to raise awareness of ‘dairy poverty’.
Arla Foods
🌍 News from the FoodTech Weekly community
👨🏻💻 Oshi (U.S.) is hiring a Sales Director… Bezos Earth Fund (U.S.) is recruiting a Program Officer, Sustainable Protein.
🎤 Early-stage food startups, last call to apply for the Tonic Summit 2024 Pitching Competition, taking place on Nov 19, 2024 at K-Kampus in Helsinki (🇫🇮). Applications close Sunday, Nov 3, 2024. Compete for a $5K prize in services from ArcticStartup, and pitch in front of 80+ FoodTech investors and 200+ food industry representatives. More details and how to apply here. For a 25% event ticket discount, use this unique link.
🎤 Brighter Future offers Perfect Your Pitch: Live Reviews with Climate & Impact Investors! on Dec 9, 2024, where you can receive valuable feedback from investors and connect with other climate-focused founders. Submit your deck in advance for a chance to get live reviews. Register here.
Want to share some FoodTech news/project with other FoodTech Weekly subscribers? Hit reply.
🎲 Random Stuff
🏠 Old wind turbines being turned into cute, tiny homes.
🧲 A research team at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore has developed miniature, grain-sized robots capable of carrying and delivering multiple drugs to targeted areas within the human body — and the robots are controlled entirely by magnetic fields.
🌽 The history of corn mazes.
🎎 The Japanese village of Ichinono has fewer than 60 people left, mostly elderly, so residents have stitched together a population of puppets to keep them company; the puppets ride swings, push carts, and smile eerily at visitors. And the puppets will absolutely not give you nightmares…
I love you.
Daniel
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🎵 This issue was produced while listening to After Dark by Mr.Kitty
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