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FoodTech Weekly #45 by Daniel S. Ruben
News on FoodTech, food, and society
Daniel S. Ruben
April 16, 2021 • Estimated Reading Time: 14 minutes
FoodTech Weekly #45
Hi there,
Thanks for all the love you've sent via email, LinkedIn, ICQ, and MySpace since my announcement last week that I've started at Stockeld Dreamery. You're all awesome.
On the side of this full-time job, I've got some other engagements. One I'm really proud of is Blume Equity, where I'm an Operating Expert. There's a funding gap in Europe for growth-stage companies (I read somewhere that only 1 of 8 European startups make it to Series B, vs. 1 of 4 in the U.S.). And there are other funding gaps too. In the Nordics, all-female startup founding teams received just 1.3% of the available capital in 2019. And we know that just a fraction of VC decision-makers are women. Blume invests in European growth-stage businesses in foodtech and healthtech, and has an all-star female founding team. So this excites me. I wrote a bit about it here.
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I was interviewed in Swedish for a publication called The Future Sustainable Food System, (see p. 8). Apparently, I'm 'The Spider in the Food Tech Web'.
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To brie or not to brie: The Netherlands has been hit by a major cheese shortage (more on that below). If I only knew someone working with cheese who could be of help...
Image: Albert Heijn website, via Google Translate
OK, on with the show!
Highlights
Conversations: Johanna Linnros (Oatlaws)
Noteworthy: Ÿnsect acquires Protifarm in insect-industry consolidation; Hazel Technologies and Mori raise $70M and $16M respectively for food waste tech; WPI researchers manage to culture human heart cells on spinach leaves in scientific breakthrough; PeakBridge and EIT Food launches new €30M FoodSparks foodtech fund
News from the FoodTech Weekly community
Random Stuff: The WHO calls for a ban on the sale of live animals in food markets; new report on food loss and waste; why you should give Edam that hackers created a Dutch cheese shortage. And more.
Conversations
Had a chance to chat with Johanna Linnros, CEO of Oatlaws in Sweden. Johanna is a self-declared 'FMCG gal', having worked for L'Oréal, Unilever, and Altria, for many years in different roles. Since 2020, she's led Stockholm-based Oatlaws (fun trivia: the Outlaws co-founder is Swedish actor Joel Kinnaman, who played Gov. Will Conway in House of Cards). Oatlaws is developing clean label, nutritious foods within the breakfast and snacking categories -- such as e.g. chia puddings and protein puddings. So far, the company sells its products in select stores in Sweden and Finland and is expanding its retail footprint day by day. Oatlaws is looking for all types of factories and sourcing units in Europe that can produce clean-label plant-based private label products such as granolas, mueslis, cereals, bars, porridges (wet and dry), oat beverages, and oat crackers and bread etc. Johanna can be reached via LinkedIn and email.
Image: Oatlaws
Noteworthy
French insect-as-feed company Ÿnsect has acquired Dutch company Protifarm, to produce mealworms for human consumption. Protifarm already produces around 1k metric tons of ingredients made from mealworms annually; Ÿnsect aims to boost that to 20k metric tons per year. In January, EFSA (the European Food Safety Authority) declared mealworms safe for human consumption. In total, Ÿnsect is looking to produce 230k metric tons of insect-based ingredients for humans, plants (as fertilizer), and animals annually. Also, on the topic of insects and tech, when millions of locusts swarmed East Africa last year causing huge economic losses for millions of farmers, crowdsourcing tech helped combat the locusts. Fascinating NYT read.
U.S. company Hazel Technologies has raised $70M in a Series C round. The company develops sachets (little pouches) that be placed in bulk boxes of produce, such as fruits and vegetables. This inhibits the release of ethylene, which is a ripening agent. In other words, it extends shelf life, of up to 3x. The company believes it will have saved 1B lbs (450M kgs) of produce from going to waste, since its founding in 2015. Also in the U.S., with a similar mission, Mori has raised $16M in Series B funding; the company creates an edible, undetectable protective coating around fresh and shelf-stable foods, that help reduces food waste and packaging waste. Other startups to watch in this space include e.g. Apeel Sciences, Stix Fresh, Sufresca, and Saveggy. And Strella Biotechnology in Philadelphia.
Russian startup Strizh-Aqua HUB will partner with Israeli AqauMaof to develop an indoor facility for RAS (recirculated aquaculture system) to grow Atlantic salmon in the southern Russian region of Krasnodar. The company plans to grow 5k metric tons of salmon per year by 2023. Russia consumes about 90k metric tons of Atlantic salmon each year, 90% of which is imported.
According to a new report, autonomous farm equipment (such as automated tractors and harvesters) will be a $150B market by 2031. Case in point: Thislaser-armed weeding robot is already sold out for 2021.
Swiss-British company Mootral develops a supplement made from garlic extracts, which it says reduces cow methane emissions by up to 38%. The company now creates carbon credits (called CowCredits) that are sold to polluters looking to offset their emissions.
U.S. startup Cultured Decadence, which develops cell-cultured lobster (as the only company in North America developing cell-cultured shellfish), has secured $1.6M in preseed funding. The company claims its the largest ever pre-seed round raised for the industry. About 80,000 tons of lobster is produced globally each year, and Cultured Decadence aims to capitalize on this. Back in November, I spoke to John Pattison, CEO and Co-Founder of Cultured Decadence, for #24 of FoodTech Weekly.
Researchers at WPI (Worcester Polytechnic Institute) have managed to culture beating human heart cells on spinach leaves that were stripped of plant cells. The scientists believe the breakthrough will enable us to eventually use multiple spinach leaves to grow layers of heart muscle to treat heart attack patients. The technology can also be used in novel food applications -- e.g. as a scaffold to grow cell-based steaks.
Image: WPI
Beyond Meat has announced a major retail expansion in Europe; the company's products are already available in 122,000 retail and foodservice outlets all over the world (Beyond's largest competitor, Impossible Foods, is preparing what rumors say is a $10B IPO). Atlast Food Co also just closed$40M in fresh funding; the company produces bacon alternatives out of mushroom mycelium. And Austrian startup Revo Foods has taken in €1.5M in new funding for its 3D printed seafood.
PeakBridge and EIT Food have launched FoodSparks, a €30M AgTech/FoodTech fund, focused on European seed and early-stage startups that work to make the food system more 'sustainable, healthy, and trusted. And Finistere Ventures has launched a similar-sized fund in New Zealand, called the Finistere Aotearoa Fund.
Swedish climate impact tool startup Klimato just raised SEK 6.5M (appr. $770,000). Klimato helps restaurants calculate the climate impact of the menu items, and communicate this to their guests so that guests can pick foods with lower climate footprints. Loyal FoodTech Weekly readers will remember I interviewed Klimato Co-Founder Henric Hansson back in March.
News from the FoodTech Weekly community
John Pattison of Madison, Wisconsin-based cell-cultivated meat startup Cultured Decadence is hiring... Kyriakos Koupparis, Ph.D. of the WFP is recruiting an Innovation Ventures Consultant and an Innovation Scaling Manager... Ram Nair, Ph.D. of Mycorena in Sweden is looking for a Brand Manager... Anders Odum of Chromologics in Denmark has an open position for a Business Development Manager.
The Cultured Decadence team
Nate Crosser has written a great, quick-to-read cell ag landscaping.
Christine Gould and her team at Thought for Food (TFF) have launched the TFF Challenge 2021, welcoming innovators and startups at every stage, from anywhere, to help source solutions to the question: 'How do we feed 10B people on a hotter planet?'
Former MEP Christofer Fjellner and others are starting a think tank focused on public health, environment, and food issues. They are now looking for a writer for a report on food innovations with potential climate and/or public health benefits that never reached the market due to laws or regulations. They would like to collect the most glaring examples, try to find a common thread, and present a more sensible, risk/benefit approach to food sector regulation. 10 to 20 pages, in English. If of interest, please get in touch with Jonas Sigedal.
Kaila Colbin of Boma, New Zealand is putting together E Tipu 2021: The Boma Agri Summit on May 11-12; two days of extraordinary speakers and interactive workshops designed to explore, expand and reshape the way we view the future of the agri sector. Ticket holders can watch talks in real-time or on delay, connect with other virtual and physical attendees, participate in virtual-only workshops, and more. Use the code FoodTech to save $20NZD off your virtual ticket here.
Want to share some FoodTech news/project with other FoodTech Weekly subscribers? Hit reply.
Random Stuff
The WHO and PAHO have released a new report on sugar-sweetened beverage taxation in the Region of the Americas.
The WHO also recently called for a ban on the sale of live animals in food markets to combat pandemics.
Paddy of The Odin Times has written a really interesting post how e.g. how retail investors are eager to get in on private market investments, and how more and more solutions are being developed to cater to this need. Paddy notes that only a handful of VC funds are actually making great returns, and have a really long time horizon. (While you're at it, Paddy's previous post Pre-seed is coming is definitely worth reading.
ReFed, NRDC, The Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic, and the WWF have developed a US Food Loss and Waste Policy Action Plan. It's just 8 pages, and worth checking out.
Not having a gouda day: The largest supermarket chain in the Netherlands, Albert Heijn, has run out of cheese after a ransomware attack on the warehouse and transport provider Bakker Logistiek. Says Bakker director Toon Verhoeven: '...In our warehouses, we no longer knew where products were. These are very large warehouses, you don't just go looking for a pallet.'
I love you.
Daniel
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This issue was produced while listening to Serenade by Steve Miller Band. Follow me on LinkedIn and Twitter (I'm @danielsruben on Clubhouse). Did your brilliant friend forward this to you? Subscribe here.