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- FoodTech Weekly #231 by Daniel S. Ruben
FoodTech Weekly #231 by Daniel S. Ruben
News on FoodTech, food, and society
Daniel S. Ruben
January 31, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 14 minutes
In partnership with
FoodTech Weekly #231
Hi there,
If January was a week, it’d be a Monday. I’m glad it’s almost over.
FoodHack just interviewed around 40 impact investors to find out what solutions are top of mind for them, in terms of fixing the food value chain. I was one of these investors, and mentioned the need to digitize the supply chain, decarbonize ag by tackling ag, and cutting agrochemicals use. Other topics frequently mentioned by investors included e.g. 💊 Food as Medicine, 🧉functional beverages, ♻️ upcycling waste to value, 🌾 regen ag, ⚖️ obesity and nutrition innovation,🦗 insect-based proteins, 🌾 sustainable nitrogen, 🚜decarbonizing farm machines, 🧬 crop genomics, and 🧫 maturing of cultivating meat.
This week's rundown:
💵 $50M+ investment to scale precision-fermentation in Indiana
🪰 The world’s largest insect farm is being built in Spain
⬇️ AgTech VC investments dropped ∼25% in 2024
Let's go!
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💰 Funding
🇺🇸 Liberation Labs, which is building a commercial-scale precision fermentation biomanufacturing facility in Richmond, Indiana, has secured $50.5M in new capital via a convertible note.
🇳🇱 AgTech startup Agurotech has bagged €2.25M ($2.34M) led by Navus Ventures and joined by ROM InWest and Rabo Ventures. The startup develops, manufactures, and delivers e.g. sensor tech, weather stations, and applications to farmers, helping them to make informed decisions about resources like water.
🇨🇭 Voltiris, which optimizes solar energy use for greenhouses, has scored a CHF 4.8M ($5.3M) Seed round, backed by EquityPitcher Ventures, 3M Ventures, and Satgana.
🇳🇴 Avisomo, which develops automated vertical farming solutions, has harvested €5M ($5.2M) in grant and equity funding from Innovation Norway and existing investors.
🇫🇷 Beans (which I interviewed back in Sep) has raised €1.4M ($1.45M) from Norrsken, maze impact, Waterlemon Ventures, FoodTech Founders, and a few angels incl. yours truly. The company rescues unsold CPG/FMCG food inventory from going to waste, instead selling it at a discount to consumers via e-commerce.
Ines Sánchez-Castillo and Louis Paulet, Beans
🇮🇱 Pluri of Israel announced it has secured $6.5M in investment, and that it has acquired at least 71% of fellow Israeli company Kokomodo, which produces cell-cultured cocoa, in a transaction worth $4.5M.
🇸🇪 Cgrain, which automates and digitizes visual grain inspection using AI, has closed a SEK 5M ($450K) funding round. Here’s a one minute video on how it works.
🇫🇷 Le Fourgon has nabbed €8.2M ($8.5M) in funding from ID4 Ventures, Teampact Ventures, La Poste Ventures, Bred, Noshaq and Future Positive Capital. The company offers a home delivery service for products like e.g. drinks, pasta, rice, hygiene, and beauty, that are delivered in glass bottles. On the next delivery, Le Fourgon collects the empty containers, which are then cleaned and reused. The startup delivers daily in 20 French cities and over 2,500 towns, preventing the use of over 9,000 tons of plastic.
🇺🇸 Atomo Coffee, which produces a 50:50 beanless coffee blend, has hauled in $7.8M in Series B funding.
🎙️ Investment Climate: Steven Lockyer of Inform Ag shares how to get funded in 2025
This week, Alex Shandrovsky met with Steven Lockyer, Managing Director of Inform Ag (which focuses on smart irrigation, farm management, and harvest efficiency). Fresh off a successful $7M capital raise in August, Steve highlighted how being profitable before the raise gave them a position of strength when engaging with investors. He also detailed the unique journey of securing their lead investor, Rural Funds Management, one of their largest clients, and the challenges and considerations of opening their business to a customer-turned-investor.
Top three findings from this conversation:
Bootstrap Beginnings. The business was initially bootstrapped using personal funds and side industrial projects. “ We bootstrapped it with their own cash for a period. So, my background being industrial automation, one way we funded the business was that every 6 to 12 months, we'd take on a large industrial project. For example, the last one we did, we had a 500 ton crane puller. A 50 ton oven that made banana bread out of a factory and blocked a whole six lane highway, moving it into a new facility. So that's how we built up a war chest of cash that we could then use to be the basis of running projects and generate cash flow. So we avoided external investment really by doing that.”
Full Round Taken by One Investor. Allowing a single investor to take the entire round simplified the process and strengthened the partnership. "They were keen to take the full round... it just worked. They were the right fit for us, you know we had common values, common kinds of aspirations for the industry goals for where we saw the technology going."
Seeking Advice Led to Opportunity. Seeking guidance from trusted connections can lead to unexpected opportunities. " When I was in their office one day, I was actually looking for some advice and that turned into a subsequent meeting with their CEO, who then invited us to Canberra and asked us to present the opportunity to them."
🧐 Noteworthy
🐛 Tebrio is constructing in Spain what it says will be the world’s largest insect farm, capable of producing 100K tons annually of insect-based products when fully operational. The €110M ($114M) project is expected to be completed in 2028. In related news, the holding company of French insect protein startup Agronutris is at risk of insolvency.
📉 VC investments in AgTech startups dropped by 25.6% in deal value and 24.3% in deal count in 2024 vs the year prior, a new Pitchbook report shows. The median deal value reached a record high of $3.6M, driven by the increased focus on late-stage startups.
🚀 The South Korean Ministry of Agriculture, Food, and Rural Affairs (MAFRA) is launching a 200B KRW ($138M) fund focused on smart agriculture and FoodTech.
🪹 Singapore-based precision fermentation company TurtleTree has laid off nearly all its employees and is operating with a skeleton staff amid difficulties in securing capital, Green Queen reports.
🐝 High use of fertilizer halves the number of pollinating insects, and cut flower numbers fivefold, says a new study from the University of Sussex and Rothamsted Research (h/t NatureTechMemos).
🌍 News from the FoodTech Weekly community
👨🏻💻 OlsAro (🇸🇪) is hiring an Agronomist and Trait Breeder… FoodTech Innovation Network (🇸🇪) is recruiting a Project Coordinator.
🎤 NECTAR is hosting the inaugural TASTY Awards on March 12 at The Melody in San Francisco, where the winners of the world's first consumer-chosen alternative protein awards determined by blind taste test will be unveiled. Join here.
Want to share some FoodTech news/project with other FoodTech Weekly subscribers? Hit reply.
🎲 Random Stuff
🐳 British Royal Navy sensors picked up two suspicious pings while scanning for enemy activity. Eventually, they determined the sound actually appeared to have come from farting whales. A source said: “We are taking it very seriously. We have to assume the worst.”
🍿 The Indian government has a three-tiered system for taxing popcorn, based on whether the popcorn is packaged or sold loose, carries a brand name or is generic, and is salted or sweet (h/t Nordic9).
🍬 U.S. soup brand Progresso is celebrating National Soup Month by launching a hard candy called Soup Drops — “soup you can suck on”, which captures the taste of Progresso Traditional Chicken Noodle Soup.
Progresso
😮 Cattle gallstones, worth 2x as much as gold, is driving a global smuggling frenzy.
🥴 The alcohol industry is addicted to its heaviest drinkers; one-fifth of adults represent 90% of U.S. alcohol sales volumes.
📺 How America tuned into the TV dinner — an illustrated story.
🧛♂️ Glasgow performers Graham Ramsay and John Beagles have been making, cooking, and sometimes eating black puddings made from their own blood: “There is a tang”, Ramsey says, “And it’s quite salty too.”
I love you.
Daniel
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🎵 This issue was produced while listening to Wild Horses by The Rolling Stones
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