- FoodTech Weekly
- Posts
- FoodTech Weekly #35 by Daniel S. Ruben
FoodTech Weekly #35 by Daniel S. Ruben
News on FoodTech, food, and society
Daniel S. Ruben
February 05, 2021 • Estimated Reading Time: 10 minutes
FoodTech Weekly #35
Hi there,
I'm doing a Clubhouse session with Johan Jörgensen (a.k.a. Mr. FoodTech Sweden) on Monday, 4pm CET (10am EST). We're calling our convo Two Bearded Boys on Food and Tech. I have no idea how things will play out. But I do have some Clubhouse invites, so hit me up if you want one.
Norrsken Impact Accelerator(which I support as a venture partner) has now received applications from over 60 countries. So that's pretty amazing. If you know of a startup (especially in FoodTech) aiming to positively impact a billion lives, ask them to apply by Feb 28. Also, we just brought on UNDP as a partner!
I'll be moderating a European investor panel during New Food Invest (March 18, 2021). Confirmed panelists include Eric Archambeau (Astanor) and Rosie Wardle (Synthesis Capital, formerly with CPT Capital). Should be fun - I admire them both deeply.
Onwards!
Highlights
Conversations: N/A
Noteworthy: Future Meat Technologies raises $26.75M, reduces production cost for cell-based chicken breast to $7.50 apiece; insect-as-feed producer Protix raises $18.6M; Geltor will launch animal-free collagen in mid-2021; Saffron Tech builds vertical farm for automated saffron growing; Impossible Foods slashes grocery price of Impossible Burger by 20%
News from the FoodTech Weekly community
Random Stuff: Spinach can now send emails; urban ski-sharing programs; tree-planting robots; turning a leek field into beautiful artwork, that boosts crop yields. And more.
Conversations
Noteworthy
Future Meat Technologies of Israel, which develops cell-based chicken, has taken in $26.75M in new funding. Investors include e.g. Tyson Foods, ADM, S2G Ventures, Bits x Bites, and Germany dairy producer Müller Group. The company also announced that they've reduced the production cost of its cell-based chicken breast down to $7.50 apiece. This is quite remarkable, given that when the first cell-based hamburger was presented to the world in 2013 by Dr. Mark Post, the production cost of that was over $300,000. When Future Meat Technologies announced its previous funding round in October 2019, the production cost was still $150-200 per pound (0.45 kgs). The company aims to get products on the market next year, depending on regulatory approvals.
Netherlands-based insect-as-feed producer Protix has raised $18.6M to boost its international expansion. The company sells insect-meal as feed for e.g. the aquaculture industry. In 2019, Protix opened a 14,000 sq. m (140,000 sq. ft.) facility in the Netherlands, which can convert 100,000 metric tons of vegetable residual flows into protein, via insects. The company has raised well over $70M in total.
Danish wine recommendation and marketplace app Vivino has raised $155M in a fresh Series D round. The company has 50M users, that have uploaded 1.5B pictures of wine labels and bottles. The company has 200 employees and sells wine in 17 countries, generating $250M in annual sales.
Geltor, which designs functional proteins such as gelatin via microbial fermentation, will launch an animal-free vegan collagen in mid-2021, for the food and nutrition markets. Collagen is traditionally sourced from animal skin, bone, and connective tissue. Geltor raised a $91.3M round last year.
Israeli company Saffron Tech is developing a technology for an automated vertical farm, to grow saffron all year round. The global saffron market is worth $1B and Iran supplies 90-95% of all saffron, because of favorable climate conditions and the cheap labor (saffron farming is very labor-intensive).
Saffron. Image: Wikimedia Commons
U.S. FoodTech company Pairwise, which uses CRISPR-Cas9 to enhance fruits and vegetables, has closed a $90M Series B round. The company can eliminate bad odors and tastes for produce, but also improve shelf-life, yield, and seasonal availability of fruits and vegetables.
Impossible Foods just cut the suggested grocery price of its Impossible Burger by 20% for 17,000 grocery stores in the U.S. The company says it will eventually undercut the price of animal-sourced ground beef. The company has expanded its retail footprint from 150 stores to 17,000 in about a year.
Scientists warn that factory farming raises the future pandemic risk, stressing that numerous zoonotic pandemics can be traced to how humans interact with animals. At the same time, the largest-ever opinion poll (1M people) shows that a plant-based diet is the least favored solution to climate change (which indicates that many people are not ready to give up animal-sourced foods).
Atlast, a U.S. FoodTech startup, has developed a bacon using mycelium, the fine rootlike structures of fungi. And it supposedly tastes fantastic.
PizzaForno of Canada is bringing its automated pizza kiosks to the U.S. It can bake a pizza in two minutes, by using hot air blasts.
PizzaForno
ReFed has released a cool new data visualization tool to explore solutions to food waste.
Indonesia's Green Butcher has raised $2M for its plant-based meat alternatives. Investors in the round included Teja Ventures and Unovis Asset Management.
News from the FoodTech Weekly community
Melissa Ho of WWF-US is looking to hire a Leader, Africa's Food Future Initiative. Deadline to apply today, Feb 5. More info here.
Trellis Road VC has written two great pieces, "Where to start your FoodTech startup" and "The A-Z of Foodtech incubators, accelerators & grants". They're worth checking out.
Seth Olson of Resonance has been working with the Platform for Accelerating the Circular Economy (PACE) community over the last year to develop the Circular Economy Action Agenda for Food. It lays out three key objectives for circularity in the food system and ten calls-to-action that each has concrete examples of how different stakeholders can take action. If you want to learn more, reach out on LinkedIn
Want to share some FoodTech news/project with other FoodTech Weekly subscribers? Hit reply.
Random Stuff
Check your POP-eye settings: Scientists have taught spinach to send emails.
This carbon-absorbing residential high-rise in Taipei is beautiful.
The city of Lahti, Finland, just launched the world's first urban ski-sharing program.
One man can make a difference: Bike lanes in LEGO City might soon be a thing
University of Tartu, Estonia, and Milrem Robotics have developed an autonomous robot forester that has the capacity to plant thousands of trees a day using driverless technology.
Dutch artist and inventor Daan Roosegaarde has installed a 20,000 sq. m (200,000 sq. ft). artwork in the Netherlands, covering a field of leek with LEDs, said to increase crop growth and reduce the need for pesticides. More than anything, it's very pretty. Like Avatar, but without the Pocahontas story ripoff.
Image: YouTube
I love you.
Daniel
- - -
This issue was produced while listening to More I See by S. Carey. Follow me on LinkedIn and Twitter. Did your brilliant friend forward this to you? Subscribe here.