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- FoodTech Weekly #28 by Daniel S. Ruben
FoodTech Weekly #28 by Daniel S. Ruben
News on FoodTech, food, and society
Daniel S. Ruben
December 04, 2020 • Estimated Reading Time: 13 minutes
FoodTech Weekly #28
Hi there,
This week, Arman Anatürk ofFoodHackand I published a list of many of the coolest FoodTech and AgTech companies in the FoodTech innovation powerhouse Netherlands🇳🇱. Check out thelist here.
The biggest news this week was undoubtedly Singapore'sregulatory approvalof cell-based meat, a world's first. As Michael Klarnoticed:
Less surprisingly, the French Minister of Agriculture, Julien Denormandie, quickly condemned Singapore's decision, using this classic argument:
To me, the French, and indeed European, Luddite approach to certain new technologies and innovations remind me of China 600 years ago. Back then, China was unrivaled on the seas, having the largest fleet in the world. Worried about threats to their power from merchants, the Chinese government however burned the fleet and let it rot. China isolated itself for hundreds of years (while innovation and exploration happened elsewhere) and has only really caught up again today.
So what does Singapore's decision mean? With a clear regulatory framework for bringing cell-based meat to market, Singapore will be a very attractive location to cell-based meat companies for R&D, production, and distribution. Existing companies might move there, and new startups will be established there -- unless other countries and regions offer similar regulatory pathways to market.
In 2013, a cell-based hamburger cost $300,000 and felt like science fiction. Just 7 years later, there is regulatory approval in one jurisdiction, the production cost has dropped over 99.9% (as per Shigeta's Law), and 80+ companies are racing to hit the market first. There are still technological, regulatory, and consumer acceptance obstacles -- we may run into some insurmountable barriers -- but the cell-based meat example gives hope that humanity can quickly solve complex problems in a relatively short amount of time.
(And to Mr. Denormandie of France, I'd like to ask whether force-feeding duck and geese for foie gras is more natural than the cultured foie gras that French startup Gourmey is developing).
Highlights
Conversations: Albert Payaró Llisterri & Johanna Öhlén Meschke (Urban Oasis), Mihir Pershad (Umami Meats)
Noteworthy: Phood raises $2M for food waste-prevention tech; Float Foods unveils plant-based whole egg substitute; the global AgTech market projected to grow by 150% to $22.5B by 2050
News from the community
Random Stuff: A new apple variety has been discovered; the launch of the Foodicons Challenge; a food commercial that will make you smile. And more.
Conversations
This week I visited Albert Payaró Llisterri (Founder/CEO) and Johanna Öhlén Meschke (CMO) at vertical farming company Urban Oasis in their pilot farm, deep underground in Stockholm, Sweden. Right next to it, they're busy constructing their commercial-sized farm (funded in part by the $1.2M the startup recently raised). Urban Oasis grows leafy greens like kale, bok choi, and lettuce, which are then sold through major grocery retailers. The compelling thing about vertical farming is that you can grow much more per square meter/ft., you can grow 24/7/365 without worrying about the ambient weather conditions, you don't have to worry about using pesticides and herbicides, you save water and nutrients, and you can start to optimize your plants for taste and nutrition, with full traceability. The drawbacks include high electricity costs for LED lights and HVAC, high labor costs, and that it's hard to grow things beyond leafy greens and micro herbs (and marijuana...) profitably. But it's clear that the indoor vertical farming industry will continue to grow. Others to watch in this space include e.g. Plenty, Aerofarms, and Infarm.
Part of the Urban Oasis pilot farm
Spoke to Mihir Pershad, Founder and CEO of Umami Meats on Thursday. Mihir wanted to save the ocean fisheries from collapse: 'There's strong projected demand growth for seafood; many species are overfished, and cannot be easily farmed. We haven't closed the lifecycle on some species like eels, so baby glass eels are caught in rivers in Maine, and then shipped to Asia to farmed, and then sold for consumption in Japan, Korea, and Singapore.'Ocean acidification and rising sea temperatures also make it harder for crustaceans to form shells, making them more scarce. And certain forms of aquaculture cause great environmental harm, such as mangrove deforestation. Mihir has a biochemistry background, so he thought there must be a way to get food for people to consume without all the current components of the food system, including animals. So he moved to Singapore 'because the regulatory environment for cell-based food is more favorable' (sorry France, you missed out on this entrepreneur!) and formed Umami Meats as B2B enabling technology provider. Umami Meats sees a potential 100x cost reduction from bovine serum, which is a major cost driver of producing cell-based meat -- and it feels it has a good idea of what their cost structure will look like at scale. In addition, Umami Meats aims to develop cell lines for fish, that are optimized for a low-cost growth medium (and has received a grant from the government in Singapore for this). Mihir said 'everyone here in Singapore are pleased that the regulatory for cell-based worked out the way it did. Now we can look at the rules and framework that's in place; it makes it easier for young companies to understand what's needed to do R&D and bring something to market.' Umami Meats is currently raising $1.5M, and is interested in partnering with actors interested in replacing their FBS costs, and lowering their medium costs. Mihir can be reached via LinkedIn and email.
Mihir Pershad, Umami Meats
Noteworthy
New York startup Phood has raised $2M. The company uses tech like computer vision and AI to track, reduce, and prevent food waste in the foodservice industry. Reducing food waste saves the environment, but also cuts costs and labor.
Swedish company Tebrito, which produces edible insects, raised €800,000, bringing its total funding to €1.2M. Tebrito processes mealworms into a protein-rich powder, and also turn the insect poo (frass) into fertilizer. The funding news comes as the regulatory environment for insects-as-animal-feed in Europe may soon become more favorable.
Avant Meats of Hong Kong, which does cultivated fish, has secured $3.1M in funding from a group of Chinese and international investors. Just weeks ago, the company unveiled a cultivated fish filet.
Israeli Soos Technologies has won the $1M prize in the Grow-NY competition, in competition with 250+ other companies from around the world. Each year, billions of male chicks are killed as soon as they hatch, because they cannot lay eggs. Soon Technology has developed an incubation system that can influence the poultry embryo to change a genetic male chick to an egg-laying female. They hope this will save billions of male chicks from being born and culled each year. Meanwhile, Singapore FoodTech startup Float Foods has unveiled a plant-based whole egg substitute called OnlyEg, which replicates both the yolk and the white of the egg. The company hopes to commercially launch the product in 2022.
OnlyEg by Float Foods
Juniper Research forecasts, in a new report, that the global AgTech market will grow 150% over the next five years, so that the total value of the global AgTech market will rise from $9B today, to $22.5B in 2025.
U.K. alternative feed producer Deep Branch has secured €2.5M in funding from EU Horizon 2020. The company captures CO2 from industrial emissions and uses microbes to convert the CO2 into protein. This single-cell protein can then be used as an aquafeed or as feed for terrestrial animals. At full scale in 2025, Deep Branch hopes to produce 100,000 metric tons of single-cell protein per year. Other single-cell protein companies to watch include Calysta(US) and Unibio (DK).
Future Farming has put together a catalog of 35 field and harvest robots that are commercially available in 2021. There are some pretty cool ones in there -- here's 'The Goat', for example.
Israeli startup TIPA has raised $4M (which brings its total funding to $53M); the company does biodegradable alternatives to plastic packaging and sells its products in the U.S., U.K., France, and the Netherlands. TIPA estimates the global packaging market to be worth $160B today, and climb to $200B by 2025.
News from the community
Congrats to Michelle Egger of BIOMILQ, who was just listed as a Forbes 30 Under 30.
Emil Wasteson at plant-based fish startup Hooked is looking to recruit a Marketing Manager
Anna Ottoson of Trellis Road VC has done a fantastic landscaping of the cultivated meat landscape, split by region, technology, etc. Worth checking out.
Want to share some FoodTech news/project with other FoodTech Weekly subscribers? Hit reply.
Random Stuff
Archie Thomas of Wiltshire, UK was out for a walk last month in an ancient woodland close to his home when he stumbled upon a lone apple tree, which turned out to be a previously undiscovered variety of apple. He now gets the naming rights to the new variety; his 7-year old son wants him to call the apple 'Christiano Ronaldo'.
The Food Planet Prize has announced the 2020 Finalists -- and also opened up for nominations for the 2021 Food Planet Challenge. And Forward Fooding has released 'The FoodTech 500' of 2020, which lists some of the most exciting FoodTech and AgTech startups out there.
The Foodicons Challenge has been launched -- it will develop a cooperatively-built visual language for over 500 core concepts to help explain our food systems (incl. e.g. food waste, regenerative ag, food and climate change, food packaging and supply chains), in the lead-up to the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit.
Image: The Foodicons Challenge
I know, I know: Noodles isn't the healthiest of foods (some people wouldn't even call it food, but doof). But I'm just in love with this (old) 1 min commercial.
Screenshot: YouTube
I love you.
Daniel
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