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- FoodTech Weekly #229 by Daniel S. Ruben
FoodTech Weekly #229 by Daniel S. Ruben
News on FoodTech, food, and society
Daniel S. Ruben
January 17, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 13 minutes
FoodTech Weekly #229
Hi there,
I’m looking for a new full-time job or consultancy — please like/share this LinkedIn post where I give some more context. Many of you have already engaged with the post, and/or reached out with tips and ideas, and for that I’m immensely grateful.
For the last year or so, I’ve done a lot of consulting and public speaking. But I’ve realized that it’s not enough just to make a living — I want to make a difference.
I know that’s a cliché Millennial thing to say — desiring purpose-driven careers, sustainability, diversity, work-life integration, etc. But I think my biggest fear is not having an impact.
So I hope to go into something exciting (and don’t worry, whatever that is, I plan to keep doing all my little side hustles like FoodTech Weekly and Solvable Syndicate).
This week's rundown:
💶 Formo secures tens of millions of euros to scale alt cheese production
🏭 The Netherlands invests €25M for two cellular agriculture scale-up facilities
💣 How 1,000 tons of anti-tank mines ended up at a Polish IKEA warehouse
Let's go!
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💰 Funding
🇩🇪 Formo has been approved for a €35M venture debt loan from the European Investment Bank. The scaleup, which now has raised a total of €135M (appr. $139M), produces cheese through micro fermentation (and has also researched producing dairy proteins such as casein via precision fermentation).
🇺🇸 Biosphere emerged from stealth with $8.8M in Seed funding, led by Lowercarbon Capital and VXI Capital. The company, which also announced a $1.5M contract with the U.S. Department of Defense, develops UV-sterilized bioreactors that it says can slash bioproduction costs.
🇬🇧 Arborea has bagged €5M (appr. $5.2M) in new funding, led by Indico Capital Partners and joined by Banco Português de Fomento (BPF). The company aims to capture CO2 as feedstock and then mass-produce nutrient-rich food products via microorganisms with a carbon-negative footprint.
🇺🇸 Plant-based chicken startup Rebellyous Foods has secured $2.4M, extending its $9.5M Series B round in 2023.
🇦🇹 HelloBello, which offers personalized meal plans and freshly cooked food delivery subscriptions for dogs, has closed a €4M (appr. $4.2M) in Series A funding from investors including e.g. AWS.
HelloBello
🎙️ Investment Climate: Emile Redant of Zymofix on how to get funded in 2025
This week, Alex Shandrovsky met with Emile Redant, CEO and Co-Founder of Zymofix. The AgTech company develops a new way to produce microorganisms which are used as fit-for-purpose microbial fertilizers, biostimulants and biocontrols. Zymofix recently raised $2M from High Tech Gründer Fund and two regenerative agriculture-focused family offices. The full episode can be found on Spotify and Apple.
Top three findings from this conversation:
Rejection of Product Development Objections. Many investors wanted Zymofix to focus on product development, but the founder resisted this in favor of a more sustainable, lower-risk approach. ‘ Everybody wanted us to do product development...I was very, very strongly against that. It is really a high-risk type of investment. A lot of those companies never make it, never actually bring products to the market. I've worked at a couple of those companies and it's something I didn't want to do because it takes a tremendous amount of investment money to do that with a really low chance of success,’ Emile said.
Realistic Business Vision. Zymofix collaborates with corporates to manufacture their top-selling products using innovative methods. As Emile shared, ‘We are not developing a product by ourselves. We are doing joint development with these corporations to show we can make it with better quality at a way lower cost.’
Low-Cost Manufacturing Strategy. Zymofix’s strategy to keep CAPEX low while still developing a scalable manufacturing process differentiates them from other biotechs that require massive investments for large-scale plants.
🧐 Noteworthy
🐇 The startup Ten Lives has launched a precision fermented rabbit protein, used as a healthy snack for cats.
🇳🇱 A public-private partnership in the Netherlands is launching two open-access scale-up facilities for food production via cellular agriculture, investing a total of €25M (appr. $25.7M).
🏜️ How to grow squash, melon, and corn in the desert without irrigation.
💡 A year ago, entrepreneur turned generalist VC Harry Briggs joined Astanor Ventures as Partner, becoming an AgriFood investor. Here are his thoughtful observations about AgriFoodTech and what he has learned during this year.
🍎 Japanese researchers at the Shikoku Research Institute have developed a new technology that exposes fruits and vegetables to near-infrared light for just 0.1 second; the approach reduces mold and spoilage, and cuts food waste as well as pesticide use.
Image: Shikoku Research Institute
💭 Do animals go through grief and think about death?
🤝 French precision fermentation startup Standing Ovation is partnering with Ajinomoto Foods Europe to produce its animal-free casein protein at industrial scale, Green Queen reports.
🔟 10 AgriFoodTech Battles of 2024: Hard Lessons Learned and Insights for the Industry, by Forward Fooding.
😮 Adnan Oner on the insane agriculture productivity of the Netherlands; #2 largest ag exporter globally (after the U.S., a country 237x larger), largest exporter of onions, potatoes, and seeds, 4x higher tomato yield / hectare than the runner-up, and much more. Full post and visual here.
⚠️ The FDA has proposed that at-glance-nutrition info on the front of packaged foods should be required:
FDA
🌍 News from the FoodTech Weekly community
👨🏻💻 Petgood (🇸🇪) is hiring a Social Media Marketing intern… Root Global (🇩🇪) has a number of open roles, and so does Klim (🇪🇺) all over Europe… Jellatech (🇺🇸) is looking for a Lab Technician… Finally Foods (🇮🇱) is recruiting a student with Molecular Biology experience to join on a part-time basis… Fresh Ventures (🇳🇱) wants to bring on a Venture Builder.
Want to share some FoodTech news/project with other FoodTech Weekly subscribers? Hit reply.
🎲 Random Stuff
🤖 Chick-fil-A’s lemon-squeezing robots are saving staff 10,000 hours of work.
🪖 Polish authorities have fired Maj. Gen. Artur Kępczynski for allegedly losing more than 1,000 tons of anti-tank mines last June. After the military failed to partially unload a train, the land mines disappeared, until an IKEA warehouse worker called the military to ask ‘when they would collect their mines.’
🫣 If you’re having a shitty week, just be glad you’re not the social media manager for Pakistan International Airlines, who posted this ad on X on Jan 10:
😳 ‘I am rich and have no idea what to do with my life’ - Vinay Hiremath, after having built and sold Loom for about $1B.
🌖 Food grows better on the moon than on Mars, scientists have found (as the latter’s surface is dense and clay-like).
🧑⚕️ The mayor of the Italian village of Belcastro has forbidden residents from becoming ill or getting into accidents, as the nearest Accident & Emergency department is over 45 km (28 mi) away, and the village’s on-call doctor surgery is only open sporadically, and never after hours.
🐶 I saw this dog yesterday, and had to make a meme:
🚀 Swedish artist Mikael Genberg is having a lifetime dream fulfilled by launching a little red model house (the size of a big hand) to the moon with a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket this week. Says Genberg: ‘It was a crazy, maybe idiotic, but at the same time, in my mind, really poetic thought to put a red house with white corners on the surface of the moon. What’s the purpose? It’s art.’
I love you.
Daniel
- - -
🎵 This issue was produced while listening to Valerie by Steve Winwood.
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