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FoodTech Weekly #221 by Daniel S. Ruben
News on FoodTech, food, and society
Daniel S. Ruben
November 08, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 14 minutes
FoodTech Weekly #221
Hi there,
This felt like a slower newsweek than usual for FoodTech, probably because many company announcements have been held back to not be drowned out by the U.S. election. Conversely, this has been a fantastic week to post negative stories and make sure they don’t get any media traction. Vertical farming company Bowery (which had raised $700M) is shutting down, for example. Will Plenty (almost $1B raised!) be next?
But here’s a positive news story — SuperMeat did reach out to me with an announcement they’re thrilled about; they have achieved what they say is ‘a significant breakthrough’ in their cultivated meat production, achieving cost parity with premium pasture-raised chicken at $11.79 per lbs (appr. $25.98 per kg). You can read more here in AgFunder, or watch this 3 min video, to learn more. (Two years ago, I had the opportunity of trying SuperMeat’s cultivated sausage and burger, which was obviosuly exciting — pictures and text here).
— — —
On Tuesday next week I’ll be at FoodTech Forum in Malmö (🇸🇪) where I’m e.g. jury member for ‘Company of the Year’ Award (first I thought they picked the jury members based on our last names — Skavén / Sturén / Sidén — but then they added Hedvall).
The award will celebrate a winner exemplifying entrepreneurial spirit, scalability, and market potential; one that has ‘developed innovative solutions transforming how we produce, consume, or think about food, all while contributing to a more sustainable future.’ Exciting!
This week's rundown:
💵 Swedish vertical farming company Ljusgårda rakes in appr. $14M
💶 Tebrio secures €30M to scale production of insect-based animal feed
😮 Phytoform unveils gene-edited tomato plant with 5x the fruit
Let's go!
💰 Funding
🇸🇪 Vertical farming company Ljusgårda has raised SEK 150M (appr. $14M) in capital from its existing owners incl. Back in Black Capital and Karl-Johan Persson of the H&M family. Ljusgårda says they will need to raise more capital to reach profitability.
🇩🇰 Kanpla, a tech platform used by 3K+ canteens to optimize operations and give their customers a better experience, has bagged €8M (appr. $8.6M) in Series A funding, led by HenQ.
🇮🇳 Marut Drones has scored $6.2M in Series A led by Lok Capital. The company designs unmanned drones for crop planting, spraying, and surveillance in India, and operates a fleet of about 750 drones.
🇪🇸 Tebrio has hauled in a €30M (appr. $32M) funding round. The company, which was founded in 2014, does large-scale industrial production of mealworms, aiming to boost production to 100K tons annually. The insects are used for animal feed and in bioplastics.
🇮🇹 Capital Dynamics has secured €185M (appr. $200M) to finance two of Italy’s largest agrivoltaics projects in Sicily. Agrivoltaics is the dual use of land for agriculture and solar production.
CC AgriSolar Clearinghouse
🇸🇪 Yazen has closed a €19.5M (appr. $21M) Series A round. The startup offers a service combining lifestyle advice with GLP-1 weight-loss-meds like Ozempic, hoping to combat obesity.
🇬🇧 Bendi has scooped up €960K (appr. $1M) in pre-seed funding led by Midven and joined by e.g. Heartfelt Capital, Chasing Rainbows, Innovate UK, and angel investors. The company is building an AI-powered platform that helps businesses tackle supply chain disruptions, sustainability challenges, and reputational risks.
🇸🇪 For Real Foods, which e.g. produces frozen pizza baked with a base of white cabbage or Swedish chicken instead of the conventional pizza dough has raised SEK 2.5M (appr. $250K) at a SEK 35.8M (appr. $3.3M) valuation, Impact Loop reports.
🏴 Oceanium, which produces ingredients derived from sustainably farmed seaweed, has been awarded a grant from Innovate UK and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) to boost its SeaFibre project, aiming to develop and tests its ‘superfood ingredient’ Ocean Health Nutra (full disclosure: I’m an advisor to Oceanium).
🇬🇧 Nukoko has taken an investment from ingredient company Döhler to help scale up its cocoa-free chocolate, made from fava beans.
Nukoko
🎙️ Investment Climate: Justus Lauten of foodforecast shares how to get funded in 2024
This week, Alex Shandrovsky chatted with Justus Lauten of foodforecast (episode available on Spotify and Apple). foodforecast uses advanced AI technology that enables precise sales planning, making production and ordering processes 100% automated and minimizing food waste for bakeries, supermarkets, and gastronomy. The company has raised €3M from e.g. Future Food Fund, Scalehouse Capital, and Aeronaut Invest.
This episode provides valuable insights into how essential networking, traction metrics, and strategic investor introductions are in securing funding, as well as the reality of managing fundraising efforts over extended periods in challenging market conditions.
Top three findings from this conversation:
The first business angels were the management of the bakery. Justus shared that ‘The first business angels were the management of the bakery. It was not the company itself. It was the private persons who were investing their private money. They were not familiar with the startup business, but they were seeing that the product was working and that was important for me that they were behind the idea and the product. Of course they also had networks inside the bakery companies as well into other bakery companies.’
Knowing the effects of the investment and dilution is important. As Justus said, ‘We put a very low valuation into the contract because I was not very skilled at that point. I didn't know the effects of the investment and dilution and that the founder of course should always carry a certain amount of shares during the funding process. This is something that's very important to the investors and that you as a founder should always look at, to make sure that you have enough shares for each round. They would have gotten too many shares which would have endangered the next round because the next VC would say “okay look, this is not working.”’
When the crisis happens, often your customers can become your investors. ‘I went to the Lion's Den in January or February. We got a deal but then unfortunately the coronavirus also hit Germany and all the restaurants and bakeries had to shut down partially. The deal more or less fell flat. At that point I had only spent my personal money and my bank account was nearing zero. I was getting nervous. That was the point when I approached the business angels first, so they were already customers, they knew exactly what I was doing, they knew also the potential of the software so they were really the angels in that part of the story because they helped the company survive and really push to the next level in finding an institutional VC.” Justus added.
Investment Climate
🧐 Noteworthy
📦 Too Good To Go appears to start competing with e.g. Motatos, by starting to sell surplus CPG/FMCG food from manufacturers to consumers in several European countries.
😵 Indoor vertical farming company Bowery Farming of New York is shutting down, just shy of its 10th birthday next year. The company had raised $700M from investors such as Google Ventures, Temasek, and General Catalyst and at its peak was valued at $2.3B and had 500 employees. The announcement from Bowery follows e.g. AeroFarms and AppHarvest ceasing operations.
🏭 Meanwhile, crypto companies are trying to use waste heat for greenhouse growing.
🌡️ How refrigeration ruined fresh food.
🧁 WWII-era rationing of sugar in the U.K. boosted the health of people conceived there in the 1940s, new research shows. A comparative analysis of the health records of 38K+ people conceived within a few years before rationing ended, and the health records of 22K people conceived after rationing ended, shows that those who were exposed to limited sugar intake in the womb and early life had a lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure. The researchers conclude that consuming less sugar in early life can boost health in adulthood.
The Good Ol’ Days
🌡️ Alt protein companies raised $233M in Q3 2024, bringing total investments for the year to $899M, GFI reports. About two-thirds of 2024 funding, or $572M, has gone to fermentation companies.
🍅 Phytoform of the U.K. has unveiled a new tomato variety, produced using gene editing, which is just one-sixth of a conventional tomato plant, with 5x the amount of fruit (humble brag: I interviewed Phytoform’s co-founder William Pelton on stage for The Drop back in 2022).
🪰 Do insects feel pain? If yes, how does this impact companies farming insects as livestock feed?
🗑️ How to stop the scandal of food waste (great long-read from The Guardian, including inspiring examples from e.g. Denmark).
🤖 The rise, fall, and rebirth (?) of food robotics.
🌍 News from the FoodTech Weekly community
👨🏻💻 C40 (Athens / London / Joburg) is hiring a Manager, Food Systems and a Manager, Food Data and Research… Opalia (Canada) is recruiting a Research Associate in Cell Culture… Nutropy (France) has many open roles in business, food science, and ingredients.
🔗 Alex Blunk has whipped up a little side project, Myceliated — a map of all fungi-related companies (which could be helpful for e.g. VCs or job searchers). He’d love some community feedback on Myceliated, e.g. if any companies are missing. Use the contact form on the link to provide any input.
Want to share some FoodTech news/project with other FoodTech Weekly subscribers? Hit reply.
🎲 Random Stuff
🧀 The headline:
The picture in my mind:
I love you.
Daniel
- - -
🎵 This issue was produced while listening to Seize The Day by Wax Tailor and Charlotte Savary.
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