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- FoodTech Weekly #227 by Daniel S. Ruben
FoodTech Weekly #227 by Daniel S. Ruben
News on FoodTech, Food, and society
Daniel S. Ruben
December 20, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 14 minutes
FoodTech Weekly #227
Hi there,
It’s been an intense year. Work took me to fun and exciting FoodTech and ClimateTech events in places like Cologne 🇩🇪, Copenhagen 🇩🇰, Lausanne 🇨🇭, Malmo 🇸🇪, Gothenburg 🇸🇪, London 🇬🇧, Dubai 🇦🇪, Helsinki 🇫🇮, and New York 🇺🇸 (I always offset my flights via Trine). Along the way, I’ve given keynotes, moderated panels and roundtables, manned exhibition booths, and eaten a lot of food. Meeting with — and learning from — the community in person is always such a privilege.
For FoodTech Weekly next year, I might experiment a bit with ads. Running the newsletter (incl. subscriptions to key databases and resources, as well as traveling to key events to stay plugged into the space) costs thousands of dollars. There will be no ads for Premium Subscribers (upgrade now, and I’ll send you a great book). Oh, and I might kill the FoodTech Weekly Discord. It has a few hundred members but is a bit of a ghost town.
—
As for the 2024 news cycle, it’s been hard not to feel down at times. Reading books like Factfulness and Not The End Of The World have helped to keep things in perspective.
I’m still trying to figure life out. Build things that matter and that make a difference. Be a giver, not a taker. Be present for those that matter to me. I make mistakes — sometimes painful ones, that I regret — but I try not to repeat them.
As always, thanks to all of you for reading this newsletter, sharing it with your friends and colleagues, and giving me feedback — I really appreciate it. FoodTech Weekly will be back in your inboxes on Jan 10, 2025 (unless I feel really bored, then it’ll be Jan 3).
Wishing those of you who celebrate a Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, and a Happy New Year!
This week's rundown:
💰 Yeastup scores about $10M to upcycle spent brewer’s yeast to new ingredients
😛 Researchers develop sugar-free, calorie-free protein 10K times sweeter than sugar
📸 Colombian whale swims 13K km to Africa, gets ID'ed thru whale facial recognition
Let's go!
💬 Conversation with Justin Hughes of NetZeroNitrogen
Justin Hughes spent over a decade as a fighter pilot in the Royal Air Force. Today, he's fighting another battle -- climate change.
Production and field application of synthetic fertilizer causes about 2% of total greenhouse gas emissions. NetZeroNitrogen, which Justin leads as CEO, uses a non-GM bacteria that does nitrogen fixation, meaning the company will hopefully be able to replace up to 50% of synthetic fertilizer use -- a huge win for the climate. Read the full conversation here.
Justin Hughes + the science team at NetZeroNitrogen
💰 Funding
🇨🇭 Yeastup has raised CHF 8.9M (appr. $9.9M) in Series A funding from investors such as Beyond Impact, Gentian Investments, Newtree Impact, and Angel House. The company extracts functional ingredients (such as an egg protein replacement) from spent brewer’s yeast.
🇩🇰 AgTech startup AgriRobot, which develops safety software for ag robots and autonomous tractors, has closed a funding round, bringing its total funding to €2.5M+ (appr. $2.6M). The latest round was led by Nominal Ventures and joined by Tall Grass Ventures. In somewhat related news, Cambridge-based startup Autopickr has been awarded a £475K (appr. $600K) grant by Innovate UK and Defra, to develop Vinny the wineyard robot.
🇬🇧 Cerve has bagged £3.5M (appr. $4.4M) in a funding round led by SuperSeed and joined by Zenith, Ponderosa and The First Thirty. The startup, which has 2,000 customers in Europe, provides a platform which digitizes the food supply chain and helps drive down waste.
🇺🇸 Plantible Foods, which recently announced a $30M Series B round led by Siddhi Capital and Piva Capital, has now taken in additional investment (sum undisclosed) from ICL. Plantible grows water lemna (a.k.a. duckweed) and extracts RuBisCo protein from it.
🇸🇪 Proteinish has secured SEK 3.5M (appr. $320K) in preseed funding from e.g. Foodbridge/Novax. The company is planning to build Sweden’s first large-scale facility for textured plant proteins and plant-based meat alternatives, using Swedish raw materials such as grains and legumes. Production will begin by the end of 2026.
Peter Bolinder and Isabelle Egholt Falck, Proteinish
🎙️ Investment Climate: Olaf van der Veen of Orbisk shares how to get funded in 2024
This week, Alex Shandrovsky spoke to Olaf van der Veen, CEO and Co-Founder of Orbisk, who help professional kitchens (in food service) cut food waste, and thus improve their sustainability and profitability. The conversation, which can be found on Spotify and Apple. highlights how clarity, purpose-driven action, and strong stakeholder relationships contribute to successful fundraising. Orbisk recently secured more than €8M in Series A funding.
Top three findings from this conversation:
Having strong product traction and growth helps in securing investors, even when there are setbacks in fundraising. “ We were in a fortunate position that we're on a pretty good growth trajectory. So that makes a whole lot of conversations a lot easier. Even irrespective of this Series A, we were in a position where we would have the company go well without the investment. We are at a point that's not far from cashflow neutrality and positivity. It's just that our growth ambitions wouldn't be met.”
The importance of choosing the right lead investor who actively participates in fundraising and provides clear structure. " That is basically what I should have recognized earlier. As a lead, you expect to really take the lead in this round, to provide clarity in the round, sort of boundaries, process, provide structure and clarity."
Being hyper transparent is important. " As a company and as a founder, I always promised myself and everyone around me that hyper transparency that I'm asking for in others."
🧐 Noteworthy
🍯 German researchers have developed a honey-like, sugar-free and calorie-free protein 10K times sweeter than sugar.
🚜 Cool article and video on SwagBot, ‘the AI-powered robot cattle herder preventing soil degradation.’
📉 Data from the Global Alliance for the Future of Food shows that the percentage of investment allocated to the agrifood sector decreased to 2.5% between 2017 and 2022, totaling $16.3B (h/t Green Queen).
🫰 Swedish FoodTech investment firm Nicoya has secured SEK 90M (appr. $8.2M) in new capital from e.g. IKEA heir Mathias Kamprad, and professional footballer Alexander Isak.
🛑 Canadian AquaBounty is shutting down. The company spent decades developing gene-edited salmon grown in indoor facilities; their ‘AquAdvantage salmon’ (all infertile females) grew much faster and needed less feed than conventional salmon, but the company faced both regulatory and customer acceptance headwinds.
AquaBounty salmon vs conventional salmon at same age
⚖️ A Pennsylvania teenager has sued ten major food corporations like Coca-Cola, Nestlé, and Mondelēz, accusing them of marketing addictive ultra-processed foods to kids, which has contributed to children developing diet-related chronic diseases such as diabetes.
🐣 NestFresh Eggs has marked the first hatch of in-ovo sexed chicks in the U.S., and now plans to transition its entire egg line to this new process. The technology enables hatcheries to determine the sex before they eggs. This is designed to stop the annual current culling of billions of male chicks that are of little value to the industry.
🥔 PoLoPo is moving from greenhouse scale to wide cultivation of its GM potatoes that produce high levels of protein, including ovalbumin (egg protein), boosting production capacity from tens of kilograms to three tons. (Btw, I interviewed PoLoPo CEO and Co-Founder Dr. Maya Sapir-Mir back in September).
🚚 A fleet of nimble electric lorries called Ox Trucks help cut post-harvest food loss in Rwanda — inspiring read.
🌍 News from the FoodTech Weekly community
👨🏻💻 Volta Greentech (Sweden) is hiring a Commercial Director… Klim (Germany) is recruiting a Senior Product Manager — Climate Solutions… GoNina (Switzerland) is looking for a Business Development Lead / Manager.
Want to share some FoodTech news/project with other FoodTech Weekly subscribers? Hit reply.
🎲 Random Stuff
🎄 The carbon footprint of a Christmas tree is lower than a 4 person cheese fondue. Also, TikTok’s carbon footprint is likely bigger than Greece’s.
💸 Just €0.6B was invested into European AgriTech during the first half of 2024 although deal count was high, Sifted reports:
🤯 A CEO of an EU company with €40M+ revenue has to report 649 environmental and social indicators (h/t Nordic9).
🤷 Join the Bath Party:
Jokes aside, he was a brutal dictator and I’m glad he’s gone
🐄 The average dairy cow in America produces 30 litres of milk a day; a cow in Africa only 1.6 liters.
🎢 Giving his hamster the thrill of his life:
🐋 A humpback whale has set a new migration record by traveling at least 13,000 kilometers from Colombia to Zanzibar; the whale’s identity was confirmed through the Happywhale photo ID program using facial recognition for whales (!).
👀 Authorities in the city of Bend, Oregon have asked its residents to stop sticking googly eyes on the city statues:
Bend, OR
I love you.
Daniel
- - -
🎵 This issue was produced while listening to Leaveyourlove(with MARO) by Parcels & Maro.
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