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- FoodTech Weekly #23 by Daniel S. Ruben
FoodTech Weekly #23 by Daniel S. Ruben
News on FoodTech, food, and society
Daniel S. Ruben
October 30, 2020 • Estimated Reading Time: 12 minutes
FoodTech Weekly #23
Hi there,
I tried out a new concept this week - together with Arman Anatürk, we mapped the Swedish FoodTech startups to watch in 2020:
Volta Greentech - seaweed feed supplement for cows to reduce methane emissions
Karma - app that connects restaurants and supermarkets with consumers, enabling purchases of unsold food at lower prices
Noquo Foods - developing plant-based cheese
Tebrito - growing insects as food and animal feed
Ignitia - hyper-local tropical weather forecasts for farmers
Mycorena - biotech company producing fungi-based protein
Simris Alg - land-based farmed algae for nutraceutical, cosmeceutical, and pharmaceutical purposes
Trustrace - food chain traceability solution
Good Idea Drinks - sparkling water with amino acids to reduce blood sugar spikes
Whywaste - software solution to eliminate in-store food waste
You can see the full list of 40 or so startups on FoodHack (and I'm kicking myself for forgetting to include some great startups, so hopefully the list will be updated, too). We received great feedback on this concept, so I think we'll do similar lists for other countries. Stay tuned!
Highlights
Conversations: Darko Mandich (MeliBio)
Noteworthy: Insects may now be sold as food in Sweden; Apeel Sciences raises another $30M; how Brightseed uses AI to discover links between plant ingredients and health effects; seaweed could be a €9.3B industry in Europe by 2030 according to new report
The Profile: Renske Lynde
Random Stuff: The state of Denmark goes semi-veg; a teeny-tiny tug boat; why humans prioritize high-calorie food; the Oreo Doomsday vault. And more.
Conversations
Talked to Darko Mandich of MeliBio yesterday. Originally from Serbia, he worked in the honey industry for almost 8 years, meeting over 1,000 beekeepers, selling tons of honey, and learning a lot. He grew increasingly uneasy with what he felt were some unsustainable and unethical practices in the industry. There are maybe 20,000 bee species, and commercial honey bees crowd out the native and wild bees (to get smarter on bees, here's the State of the Bees report recently published by MeliBio). In 2019, Darko moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, met his cofounder, and started MeliBio, which produces real honey using biofermentation (sort of similar to the production technology used by Perfect Day, Geltor, and Clara Foods). MeliBio has produced prototypes that people found indistinguishable from real honey in blind tests, and the company has signed LOI's with 15 companies that are interested in purchasing MeliBio's' honey as an ingredient. Darko is cautiously optimistic that we'll see products on the market already in 2021, that contain MeliBio honey as an ingredient. And tons of products on the market contain honey - from soaps and shampoos to toothpaste, cosmetics, and deodorants, to all sorts of foods and beverages. I asked Darko what his old colleagues in the honey industry would say about his current venture; he responded that 'they always said that Darko is crazy, so they'd likely say that MeliBio is his craziest idea so far. But I believe business is an engine that can enable us to shape the evolution and build a better world.' These days, Darko is working 12-14 hours per day, and feels he has achieved more in a year in California than what he did in the previous ten years combined; 'California is bringing out the best of me.' MeliBio is opening a Seed round and is also interested in connecting with FMCG (CPG) or cosmetics companies looking to shift to a more sustainable form of honey. So if this is you -- or you're just excited about honey and want to help the bees, you can reach Darko via LinkedIn and Twitter.
Darko Mandich, MeliBio
Noteworthy
This week, The Swedish Food Agency announced (link in Swedish) that insects are now allowed to be sold as food, although it cautions people with shellfish allergy to be careful eating insects. Some EU countries, such as Finland, Denmark, and the Netherlands already approve sales of whole insects, but Sweden has blocked such sales until now, which has stifled local startups from expanding. Tebrito, one of the leading insect producers in Sweden, commented that the Agency's announcement 'lifts the last hurdle for Tebrito to roll out its plan to deliver protein in the most sustainable way.'
Zophobas morio (darkling beetle / superworms)
Apeel Sciences, which I wrote about in #19 of FoodTech Weekly, has raised a new $30M Venture round; investors were Temasek, Astanor, and IFC. In total, the company has raised close to $400M. Apeel has developed an organic, invisible, edible coating that significantly extends the shelflife of produce (and can even eliminate the need for plastic wrapping of e.g. English cucumbers). Now, Apeel is expanding worldwide, including in supply chains in low- and middle-income countries. Other companies to watch in this space include e.g. Sufresca (Israel) and Hazel Technologies (U.S.).
Premium Svensk Lax (Premium Swedish Salmon) plans to build a 10,000 metric ton land-based salmon farm in Sweden. The company will raise salmon from egg to harvest, and also do the processing on-site. The project, which has been called one of the largest Swedish industrial initiatives in FoodTech, will cost about €95M ($112M). When production is fully ramped up in 2024, 40 tons of salmon will be harvested five days per week, producing 23 million meals per year -- equal to 20% of Sweden's total salmon consumption, from just one facility. Other companies to watch in the RAS space include Israeli AquaMaof, and U.S. company AquaBounty. AquaBounty, which raises bioengineered (GM) salmon, just announced a 10,000 metric ton land-based farm of their own, which will be built in Kentucky and will be fully operational in 2023.
The Chowbotics salad robot keeps adding features; now it can produce e.g. Thai noodle salad, Poke, and a smoked brisket bowl. Vending machines require very little physical space and staff, and can offer contactless solutions sought out by customers in a COVID world.
U.S. startup Brightseed uses AI platform Forager to predict the likelihood that plants will have useful natural compounds and the likelihood that those phytonutrients will have specific health benefits. The AI platform can make connections between plant ingredients and health effects far faster than any human scientist could alone. Brightseed raised $27M in September to accelerate its commercialization. The company already has a partnership with Danone North America, to use the Forager system on soy. Brightseed hopes its technology will help illuminate the dark matter of nutrition (given that 99% of the natural chemicals produced by plants, the phytonutrients, are yet unknown to science). The Rockefeller Foundation, meanwhile, is funding thePeriodic Table of Food Initiative, a global effort to create a public database of the composition and function of the food we eat.
Meati, which does plant-based whole cuts, was just foie gras'd with $28M of investor cash in its Series A round. The startup's products are based on mycelium fungi, and the company focuses on whole cuts such as chicken breast and steak.
Meati
Farmers might not need to use so much fertilizer to grow healthy crops. This NatGeo article has more.
Are food rescue apps part of the solution, or part of the problem? Karma co-founder Hjalmar Ståhlberg Nordegren offers some interesting reflections in this Sifted article.
Arable, which makes connected devices for ag businesses, just closed a $20M round. The company, founded in 2014, synthesizes climate, plant, and soil data (e.g. precipitation, crop water deficit, soil moisture, chilling hours, etc) to produce visualizations in dashboards accessible to farmers via web and apps.
A new report published by the Seaweed for Europe coalition clams seaweed could be a €9.3B industry in Europe by 2030, creating 100K+ jobs and bringing many environmental benefits such as CO2e mitigation as well as nitrogen and phosphorus capture. To realize the vision, European seaweed production will have to increase from 0.3M tons today to 8M tons in 2030.
The Profile
Renske Lynde moved to California for graduate school (an MPP at UC Berkeley), and
never left. She's been working on how we produce and distribute foods for 20 years - from working for ag/trade policy non-profits to the 'Buy Fresh, Buy Local' campaign, to the San Francisco Food Bank. In 2014, she started Food System 6, a non-profit organization that works to transform our food system into a new model that is optimized for environmental, physical, and social health. This is done by supporting diverse entrepreneurs in four-month cohort models. So far, FS6 has had 5 cohorts of startups. Since 2019, Renske has shifted roles to become Board President of FS6, as she is now General Partner at 1st Course Capital, an early-stage VC focused on food systems transformation, that she founded in 2019.
Random Stuff
The new draft purchasing strategy for the state of Denmark aims to introduce two vegetarian-only days per week (link in Danish) in government-funded institutions, such as hospitals. There is already political backlash.
If you're a foodtech startup, consider applying to Forward Fooding's 2020 FoodTech 500. Deadline Oct 31.
Dutch scientists have 3D-printed a tug boat 1/3 the size of a human hair, and it's CUTE.
This hit too close to home: New research from Wageningen University indicates that human spatial memory prioritizes high-calorie foods. Speaking of which, Oreo has built a Doomsday vault in Svalbard, Norway (near the Global Seed Vault) to protect its cookies and recipe. This 5 min video/ad has the story.
The World Hunger Clock, which shows how the number of people living in moderate to severe food insecurity is decreasing, is a beautiful thing.
I love you.
Daniel
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