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- FoodTech Weekly #36 by Daniel S. Ruben
FoodTech Weekly #36 by Daniel S. Ruben
News on FoodTech, food, and society
Daniel S. Ruben
February 12, 2021 • Estimated Reading Time: 14 minutes
FoodTech Weekly #36
Hi there,
On Monday Feb 15, 4pm CET (10am EST) Johan Jorgensen and I will be hosting Two Bearded Boys on Food and Tech, our second Clubhouse session. Our special guest is Bjorn Oste, co-founder of Oatly. So we'll chat about Oatly & the protein shift, as well as some current projects Bjorn is involved in, including Good Idea Drinks and Lument. Hope you can join! (if you need a Clubhouse invite, just let me know).
Earlier that same day, I'll also be on a panel (in Swedish only, sorry!) with the CEO of ICA -- the largest food retailer in Sweden -- and some other big shots, on how to increase the consumption of plant-based foods in Sweden.
Enjoyed this short post on the importance of respecting other people's time, when reaching out and asking for a meeting.
Norrsken Impact Accelerator is still open for applications; 20 of the world's most promising impact startups will be selected for an 8-week sprint this summer in Stockholm, they'll be provided with $100,000 each in upfront investment, support from unicorn founder mentors, and a chance to pitch to the world's leading investors. This year's special focus is on FoodTech startups.Apply here, or show this to a startup that should -- because if they win, we all win.
Plenty of exciting news to report this week -- so let's get to it!
Highlights
Conversations: Gerit Tolborg (Chromologics), Mariette Andersson (SolEdits), Pernilla Westergren & Thomas Dalebring (FUNCiFUR)
Noteworthy: Aleph Farms unveils 3D printed whole-cut cell-based steak; gene-edited tomatoes and salmon hit Japanese and U.S. markets, but will consumers buy these products?; Oatly and Chobani eyes $10B IPOs; Edete launches artificial pollination tech; European FoodTech investments reached €868M last month; DoorDash acquires robot salad maker Chowbotics
News from the FoodTech Weekly community
Random Stuff: Organic food isn't that awesome, a new book claims; the True Cost of Food; a 3D printed house. And more.
Conversations
Spoke with Gerit Tolborg, P.h.D., co-founder, and CEO of Chromologics in Denmark. Gerit did her P.h.D. at the Technical University of Denmark, exploring how one could produce coloring for foods by growing a special type of fungus in a bioreactor. She designed a process making it possible to specifically produce certain red pigments -- and that in turn spawned the seed to what became Chromologics in 2016. So what problem is Gerit and her team solving? Currently, there are 4-5 key pigments, mainly from beetroots, tomatoes, insects, grapes, and carrots, that the food industry uses to color foods in certain ways (this is a $2B market, and red color is about half of that). All of these different pigments have various performance challenges such as pH stability, temperature stability, etc, and some of them are also very volatile in price because the supply chains are not stable. In addition, people with various dietary restrictions (vegan, kosher, halal) avoid e.g. carmine/E120, the red food coloring derived from insects (fun fact: It takes 100,000 insects to produce 1 kg/2.2 lbs of carmine). Gerit believes the fermentation-derived red color made by Chromologics will ensure a better performing, more sustainable, and more cost-competitive food coloring product. Today, the company has raised €1.5M in equity and counts a team of 4. The startup expects to sell B2B to color houses and also directly to food manufacturers; in fact, Chromologics is already working with several companies that are testing the color for their food products. If you're a food manufacturing company and want to try a coloring that just works, for e.g. candy, ice cream, or plant-based alternative proteins like burgers or sausages -- well, pretty much anything except beverages -- you can get in touch with Gerit via LinkedIn or email.
Red color produced by Chromologics
Had a chance to get to know Mariette Andersson, CEO and Co-Founder of SolEdits. Mariette holds a P.h.D. in biochemistry, and worked 12 years in the plant biotech industry in Sweden, helping to e.g. develop potato varieties with improved starch qualities and more resistant to disease. After 2 years in the sustainable packaging industry, she joined the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, ranked one of the best in the world, where she's currently an Associate Professor. In 2013, she read the first article on CRISPR/Cas9 and was intrigued. Not long after, Mariette and co-workers started a pilot project which involved using the CRISPR technology. The challenge with conventional crop breeding of e.g. potatoes is that it can take 15 years before getting to a variety with the desired characteristics. If using genetic modification, it's faster to get the desired traits, but the approval process can take 15 years anyway, costing huge amounts of money -- meaning getting anything approved in Europe is a big challenge. CRISPR helps cut this development time from some traits to perhaps 3-5 years (although the European regulatory framework is still a challenge). In 2016, Mariette and her team first published their work and felt they could develop new potato traits that'd be useful for others. This led to the creation of SolEdits. The company, which has been self-funded so far, is currently a bit of an outsourced R&D department, where other companies needing help with improved potato traits can come to SolEdits. In the future, Mariette and her team of 4 colleagues hope to help add various quality traits in potatoes and improve crop resistance to e.g. droughts, cold spells, various diseases, and so on. SolEdits is currently likely world-leading in the way it's using CRISPR/Cas9 to improve potato traits. The company currently has two European customers and is open to support other companies looking to improve potato traits. Mariette can be reached via LinkedIn and email, as well as via the SolEdits website.
Funders and employees at SolEdits created these first-generation bioengineered potatoes with a starch that in food ensures better storage stability. When grown, they will replace some chemically modified starches in both food and industrial products, which will save 5,000-6,000 tons of chemicals annually in Sweden.
Connected with Pernilla Westergren (co-founder and CEO) and Thomas Dalebring (co-founder and CDO), of FUNCiFUR in Sweden. The company was established in 2020, after the co-founders realized the huge environmental impact of dogs, through the food that dogs consume. According to some estimates, pet food represents 25-30% of the total environmental impact of meat production (use of land, water, fossil fuels, phosphates, and biocides). 'A mid-sized dog has the same CO2 emissions as an average car in Europe', says Pernilla. FUNCiFUR develops and sells dog food derived from insect protein, as a direct-to-consumer subscription service. The startup believes their dog food is superior for the environment, but also for pet health. FUNCiFUR is about to close a pre-seed round which will enable the company to expand from Sweden to Europe. To learn more about FUNCiFUR, you can contact Pernilla and Thomas via email.
Image: FUNCiFUR
Noteworthy
Arguably the biggest news item in the FoodTech world this week was Aleph Farms' announcement that they have (together with Technion) managed to 3D print a cell-based whole-muscle ribeye steak. The company, based in Israel, also unveiled plans to launch a production facility in Japan or Singapore, for the end of 2022.
Image credit: Aleph Farms
Israeli compostable packaging company TIPA and shelf life extension company PerfoTec have released a new type of packaging that can extend the shelf life of fruit, vegetables, and flowers, by up to double the time.
A gene-edited tomato has been approved in Japan. It took 15 years to develop and has 5x the normal amount of GABA, an amino acid linked to lower blood pressure. Yet, it's unclear whether the tomato will be embraced by consumers. In a somewhat similar story across the pond, AquaBounty of the U.S. says its first gene-edited salmon (which grows twice as fast as a regular salmon and require less feed) will be harvested in March, but due to a years-long boycott campaign, the product may not become widely available in the U.S.
Rumors have it that Oatly is planning an IPO, valuing the company at $10B, and that Chobani is looking to do the same, valuing the company at $7B-$10B.
Long-term FoodTech weekly readers may recall the high-rise big farm currently being built in China. Now, something similar is being built in Singapore -- an eight-story indoor fish farm, in an effort to boost food security for the Small Red Dot, which aims to be 30% self-sufficient in food by 2030.
DoorDash has gobbled up salad robot maker Chowbotics, for an undisclosed sum, Chowbotics had previously raised $21M.
An Israeli startup, Edete, is launching commercial-scale field trials in August of its artificial pollination technology, in Australian almond orchards. This 2 min video tells more -- it's pretty fascinating.
U.K. biotech startup CellulaREvolution has closed a £1M funding round. The technology of CellulaREvolution makes it faster, cheaper, and more efficient for other companies to produce cell-based meat.
Martina Miotto, Co-Founder and CSO, CellulaREvolution
Also in the U.K., in the same space, Hoxton Farms has raised £2.7M in fresh funding. The company produces animal fat without using animals. The two founders, who met at pre-school (!), and hope their cultivated fat will allow for plant-based meat alternatives to 'look, cook, and taste like the real thing.'
European investments into FoodTech reached a record €868M in January 2021. This Twitter thread provides lots of interesting data and visuals.
Some $408B worth of food in the U.S. (more than 1/4 of total production) is wasted annually, according to ReFed's new Insights Engine. Investing just $14B could save 45M tons of food waste.
News from the FoodTech Weekly community
Is your AgriFood startup currently fundraising? FoodHack sends a monthly newsletter connecting startups to investors -- upload your deck here before Sunday, Feb 14 to get featured.
IRRIOT is hiring a sales manager.
Forward Fooding just released a new report, The State of Global FoodTech.
Want to share some FoodTech news/project with other FoodTech Weekly subscribers? Hit reply.
Random Stuff
Organic food isn't safer, nutritionally better, or more likely to have been produced by a small/local farm, a new book argues. Provocative piece worth reading from the Harvard Gazette (h/t John dlP).
A new scientific study reviewing the True Cost of Food has concluded that if climate costs were incorporated into the price of food, meat products would increase in price by 146%, dairy products by 91%, and fruits and vegetables by 25%.
Innovator Robert Luo turns expired milk into fashionable t-shirts.
A 3D printed house is for sale in NYC. The real estate agent selling the home says the cost of construction for the house was 50% cheaper, and 10x faster than comparable newly-constructed homes in the area.
I love you.
Daniel
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This issue was produced while listening to Be Kind (with Halsey) by Marshmello and Halsey. Follow me on LinkedIn and Twitter. Did your brilliant friend forward this to you? Subscribe here.