- FoodTech Weekly
- Posts
- FoodTech Weekly #50 by Daniel S. Ruben
FoodTech Weekly #50 by Daniel S. Ruben
News on FoodTech, food, and society
Daniel S. Ruben
May 21, 2021 • Estimated Reading Time: 10 minutes
FoodTech Weekly #50
Hi there,
Had a ton of new subscribers this week - a warm welcome to all of you. We're now about 1,500 subscribers in total. I don't want to brag, but we're getting closer and closer to beating Kim Kardashian's 222M Instagram following.
There's going to be a bunch of numbers this week, so buckle up.
Oatly IPO'd on Nasdaq yesterday, at a $10B valuation (bringing in $1.4B in fresh funding for the Swedish oat drinks giant), and Berlin-based pea milk producer Vly raised $6.1M, as new data showed American weekly household consumption of cow milk declined 12.2% while plant-based milk increased 35.7%, between 2013 and 2017.
Seaweed companies had a good week too. U.K. seaweed processing company Oceanium raised $2.7M; the company purchases and processes seaweed and turn it into food and sustainable packaging products. And Swedish startup Volta Greentech just closed a SEK 17M (€1.7M) round; the company produces seaweed which is fed to cows and reduces cow methane emissions by up to 80%. And that's important, as livestock represent 14.5% of anthropogenic greenhouse emissions (full disclosure: I'm an advisor to Volta Greentech).
I think seaweed's fascinating; it absorbs CO2 and nitrogen, needs no land or freshwater to be grown and has wide application areas. I think we'll see a lot more in this space in the coming years.
Enjoy your weekend!
Highlights
Conversations: Joni Rajanen (Biocode)
Noteworthy: Mosa Meats achieves 66x cost reduction for cell-cultivated fat; EAT Just cha-chings $170M for its cell-cultivated meat unit; new drone saves 95% water use; Picnic raises $16.3 for robotic pizza assembler; the pet food industry struggles with huge sustainability pawprint
News from the FoodTech Weekly community
Random Stuff: Powering a long-haul jet on cooking fuel, and more.
Conversations
Had a chance to speak with Joni Rajanen, CTO of Biocode this week. The startup, which is based in Finland, has been around for a few years after it was spun out of a company that does farming management software. In short, Biocode helps food industry companies such as e.g. Valio and HKScan to track and improve the climate aspects of their products, and to demonstrate their progress in reducing emissions. Biocode's USP is that they can get data all the way upstream to the farm itself; they can then advise farmers on how to farm better, which results in a lower CO2 footprint all across the value chain. Biocode, which is self-funded, currently has 7 full-time employees and is growing nicely. Biocode is interested in doing new pilots with food / FoodTech startups - e.g. if a company wants to understand the climate impact of a food product, Biocode can help uncover that footprint. To get in touch with Joni, ping him on LinkedIn or shoot him an email.
Image: Biocode
Noteworthy
Mosa Meats of the Netherlands, which produces cultivated meat (and whose founder Dr. Mark Post unveiled the first cell-cultivated burger in the world, back in 2013) has announced a 66x cost reduction in producing fat. The growth medium is animal-component free, and the cost of it is now just 1.52% vs. the September 2019 cost.
EAT Just has announced a $170M raise to help expand R&D and production for its cell-cultivated meat unit, Good Meat. New research funded by Israeli startup Aleph Farms shows that 80% of consumers are open to trying cell-cultivated meat.
Corteva AgriScience and Brazilian company Arpac have developed a drone spraying system that is using just 10 liters of water per hectare, vs. the 250 liters per hectare typically used by a conventional tractor, thus saving about 95% of water use. Over the last 5 months, the system is said to have saved over 1 million liters of water.
The Landvisor AplicAr-S
Israeli 3D-printed meat company SavorEat has launched a new plant-based egg venture called Egg'n'up, funded with $2.5M. The company will launch its first product at the end of 2022. But first, it needs to hire a CEO.
Plant-based chicken company Daring has raised a $40M Series B. The company is quickly expanding its retail footprint across the U.S.
Picnic
University of California scientists have discovered genetic data, that they believe could help crops like tomatoes and rice survive droughts for longer periods of time.
The pet food industry is trying to figure out how to feed pets in a more sustainable way. Today, 25% of animal protein produced in the U.S. goes to feed pets, and that results in 64 million tons of greenhouse gas equivalents.
U.K. weed monitoring robot Tom, by Small Robots Company, is now out on the field. Weeds are expensive to the industry and have become herbicide-resistant. Tom roams the fields scanning for weeds, whereafter another robot will zap the weeds using no chemicals.
Tom. Image: Small Robots Company
News from the FoodTech Weekly community
WWF is hiring a Director, Freshwater & Food Transformation... WRI is recruiting a Director, Sustainable Diets... Nowadays is hiring a Community Engagement & Customer Experience Manager... Chromologics is looking for a Senior Scientist Process Engineering... Plenty has an open role as Program Manager, Farm Launch... Geltor is filling the position of Senior Patent Agent... UPSIDE Foods (formerly known as Memphis Meats) is hiring a Communications Associate... EAT GRIM is recruiting a Procurement Manager.
Want to share some FoodTech news/project with other FoodTech Weekly subscribers? Hit reply.
Random Stuff
If you have...stifficulties, you might be interested in this new study that explores the association between plant-based diets and...wangxiety in Chinese men (trying hard here not to get caught in spam filters by avoiding naughty words).
How a NYC restaurant loses money on a $14 sandwich.
An Air France-KLM plane just flew Paris-Montreal, fueled with a 16% mix of used cooking oil. New 2022 regulations require all flights departing from France to be powered by at least 1% sustainable aviation fuel. Aviation was responsible for 915M tons of CO2 emissions in 2019 and is expected to be one of 2050's biggest remaining carbon emitters.
I love you.
Daniel
- - -
This issue was produced while listening to Natural Blues (Reprise Version / Edit) by Moby, Gregory Porter, and Amythyst Kiah. Follow me on LinkedIn and Twitter (I'm @danielsruben on Clubhouse). Did your brilliant friend forward this to you? Subscribe here.