- FoodTech Weekly
- Posts
- FoodTech Weekly #44 by Daniel S. Ruben
FoodTech Weekly #44 by Daniel S. Ruben
News on FoodTech, food, and society
Daniel S. Ruben
April 09, 2021 • Estimated Reading Time: 12 minutes
FoodTech Weekly #44
Hi there,
I can finally announce my next role -- I'm joining Swedish FoodTech startup Stockeld Dreamery as Head of Strategy and Special Projects. I'm super excited. I think and hope it'll enable me to continue to work for food systems transformation, by using breakthrough science, tech, and innovation (also, I get to make cheese from time to time - how awesome is that?). I've written more about me joining Stockeld here.
Yesterday,Wired UK wrote a long, good piece on Stockeld and Perfect Day Foods, which provides lots of details, plus some cool pictures. Fast Company also recently brought a good article on microbe-based cheese alternatives worth checking out.
I hope to share some exciting Stockeld updates from time to time, going forward.
Me at Stockeld HQ
Had a long email convo with a (superstar) friend I respect deeply, around the Seaspiracy documentary (my friend disagreed with my conclusions about the movie, that I mentioned in#42).This article sums up some of my concerns with Seaspiracy. I felt the movie wasn't nuanced, omitted key facts, and put forward claims that simply aren't true (e.g. that the oceans will be fishless by 2048 -- the problem with that is that even smart people like Norrsken VC go on to state these claims as truths). It is a fact that oceans are under severe pressure, and many fish stocks are over-exploited, depleted, or recovering from exploitation. So it's a good thing that great alternatives are emerging, such as plant-based and cell-cultivated seafood, that can help reduce pressure on the oceans. But as Mike Selden, co-founder of cultivated seafood startup Finless Foods put it ,'there's plenty to critique about fish farming that's true; it waters down their [Seaspiracy's] message to use stuff that's wrong.'
---
Was interviewed by Warp News on the growth of alternative proteins in the shadow of COVID.
OK, on with the show!
Highlights
Conversations: N/A
Noteworthy: Mission Barns raises $24M for cultivated animal fat; Mars and Futerra launch insect-based cat food; Solar Foods receives $12M to continue creating food out of thin air; Fortuna Cools lands a cool $860K for coconut fiber-based coolers; MicroSalt wants to deliver the same salt flavor with 50% less salt; Desert Control secures $23.6M to turn desert sand into fertile soil
News from the FoodTech Weekly community
Random Stuff: A different type of liquid from Bordeaux. Your friendly ex-Prime Minister Uber driver. Fermentation recipes from David Zilber. And more.
Conversations
Noteworthy
Mission Barns has raised a whopping $24M Series A round, from investors including Gullspang Re:food, Humboldt Fund, and Green Monday Ventures. The startup cultivates fat cells from pigs, chickens, and cows. The pure animal fat improves the flavor and palatability (tastiness) of plant-based meat products. Other companies in the space include e.g. Cubiq Foods and Peace of Meat.
Commitrader of Denmark has secured $4.8M in new (debt and equity) funding, from Vaekstfonden and a bunch of Danish angels. The company which was founded in 2017 has developed a trading platform for agricultural commodities and also enables farmers to sell CO2 certificates.
Cerescon has delivered asparagus harvesting robots (!) to Martens Asparagus in the Netherlands (check out the embedded video in the article). Traditional asparagus harvesting involves manual labor with visual inspection and hand cutting. Robots minimize the need for human labor. Despite price tags of several hundred thousand Euros, they still cut the harvest cost per hour by up to 70% compared with manual harvesting. This week, U.S. high-tech greenhouse operator AppHarvest announced a $60M acquisition of Root AI, which uses AI to power robots that manage indoor farming operations. Also this week, harvest automation startup Tortuga raised a $20M Series A (cool pics and videos of their strawberry harvesting robots on their website).
Automatic asparagus harvesting. Photo: Cerescon
DeliverZero was founded in New York in 2019, to tackle the city's problem of trash from takeout food packaging. The startup provides reusable containers to participating restaurants, that then deliver food to consumers in these containers. Customers hold on to the containers and return them the next time they order food from a DeliveryZero-affiliated restaurant. If not returned within 6 weeks, customers are charged $3.25 plus tax.
Mars and Futerra have launched insect-based cat food, branded Lovebug. The insect protein is from Black Soldier Fly Larvae and is sourced from Protixin the Netherlands. Studies show that e.g. in the U.S., the 160M+ dogs and cats account for about 25-30% of the environmental impacts from animal production, through their diets. Insects have a significantly lower environmental footprint than e.g. cows and chickens. Other companies to watch in this space: Reglo and FUNCiFUR (full disclosure: I'm an advisor to the latter).
Finnish startup SolarFoods has received $12M in funding from The Finnish Climate Fund. Using captured CO2, electricity, and microorganisms (bacteria), SolarFoods creates Solein, a protein powder. Sounds complicated? Watch this beautiful 3 min video, on how SolarFoods create food out of thin air.
Drone Volt is an autonomous spraying system for drones, that can spray up to 4-8 hectares of field per hour. And speaking about drones, this week Guardian Agriculture came out of stealth with a fresh $10.5M in seed funding. The startup develops autonomous electric vertical takeoff and landing drones, that collect and act on data. This can help eliminate millions of pounds of unnecessary pesticide use.
Fortuna Cools has raised $860K. The startup, based in the San Francisco Bay Area and the Philippines, uses coconut fiber to replace plastic foam insulation. The work began in 2018 when the company designed a cooler to help fishermen preserve their catch without relying on fragile foam boxes. The cold storage coolers are not only low cost and long-lasting, but also positive for the environment and local communities. The UNDP awarded Fortuna's Coconut Cooler the Ocean Innovation Prize in 2021 to accelerate the shift from plastic foam to biodegradable alternatives.
Image: Fortuna Cools
Startup MicroSalt says it can deliver the same amount of salt flavor, using 50% less salt, using an innovative formulation. It's similar to what DouxMatokis doing for sugar. The company hopes to eventually reach 80% salt reduction. Fascinating quick read in The Spoon.
Gathered Foods, which develops plant-based seafood under the brand Good Catch, has raised $26.3M in a B-2 bridge funding round.
Smartway of France takes in $12M to help reduce supermarket food waste.
Desert Control of Norway has received a private placement of NOK 200 million ($23.6M), from Norwegian and international investors. The company's technology turns desert sand into fertile soil, and saves 20-50% on water and fertilizer. Here's a 4 minute CNN segment on what Desert Control enables.
DigitalFoodLab has released its FoodTech in Europe 2021 report. Some findings: European FoodTech startups raised €2.7B last year, the same amount as in 2019 (despite the pandemic). Companies are raising more money at a very early stage, and are betting on long-term trends. The five leading European foodtech hubs are the U.K. (leader), France, the Nordics, the DACH region (Germany/Austria/Switzerland), and the Netherlands. And corporations are increasingly investing in, and acquiring, European FoodTech startups.
News from the FoodTech Weekly community
Dan Altschuler Malek of Unovis / New Crop Capital is hiring a Finance Director fluent in Dutch and English, to work with their team in Amsterdam.
Maggie Fried of CREO Syndicate is recruiting for multiple roles working with family office investors on climate and sustainability, such as a Sector Manager, an Investment Director, and an HR+Ops Manager.
BIOMILQ, which cultivates real breast milk in bioreactors, is looking to bring on summer interns (both science and non-science).
Jens Ingelstedt and Mor Aviram are hosting an April 20 event called Marketing strategies for FoodTech start-ups, with some leading Swedish and Israeli speakers, including the CEO of N!CKs.
Want to share some FoodTech news/project with other FoodTech Weekly subscribers? Hit reply.
Random Stuff
5 Recipes From Fermentation Guru David Zilber, in High Snobiety. (Bonus read: I met with David last year and recapped that convo in #15).
David Zilber
Toopi Organics of France (which I wrote about back in October, in #20, so I guess this is a weepost) collects human pee from toilets and turns it into fertilizer, which Toopi says is cheaper than -- and just as effective as - chemical fertilizer. Anyways - the company just secured €3.8M in funding.
The former Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, was recently mistaken for an Uber driver by some tipsy guys having a good night out. But he played it cool and gave them a lift to their destination (halfway there, the guys realized who their driver was).
I love you.
Daniel
- - -
This issue was produced while listening to Cheese by Stromae. Follow me on LinkedIn and Twitter (I'm @danielsruben on Clubhouse). Did your brilliant friend forward this to you? Subscribe here.