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FoodTech Weekly #97 by Daniel S. Ruben
News on FoodTech, food, and society
Daniel S. Ruben
May 06, 2022 • Estimated Reading Time: 11 minutes
FoodTech Weekly #97
Hi there,
This week, FoodTech investor Trellis Road VC organized an afterwork event with 40+ participants -- basically the entire Swedish FoodTech investor mafia -- and provided food and drink samples from almost 20 fantastic global startups (e.g.Heura, FÆRM, The Mighty Kitchen, Lupinta, Juicy Marbles, Simply Eggless, QOA, Mycorena, andBettaF!sh). It was a ton of fun.
Afterwork event with the Swedish FoodTech investor mafia
We've all made many new connections and friendships during the pandemic, but many of these people we haven't met yet IRL. So that's part of why I'm pumped for the FoodHack Summit in Switzerland next week (sold out at 500 tickets); I'll get to meet a bunch of outstanding folks for the first time (people like Arman Anaturk, who I developed a pandemic bromance with).
I'll be speaking to a lot of exciting FoodTech entrepreneurs and investors on stage for the Summit - e.g. Björn Öste (Oatly), James Rogers (Apeel), Eric Archambeau (Astanor), Kees Aarts (Protix), Guy Galonska (Infarm), and Lynsey Wenger (Pairwise) -- so if you have any burning questions for them, let me know.
This week's rundown:
Saudi AgTech Red Sea Farm raises $18.5M for greenhouse production irrigated with salt water
Melt&Marble brings in €5M Seed round for precision-fermented plant-based fat
Cambridge University researchers develops robot that can taste a dish's saltiness
Let's go!
Conversations
This week, I met Martti Paatela, Co-Founder of Finnish REBL Eats (and probably the most wholesome person I've met in a long time). However, let's start from the beginning. Some years ago, Martti was doing a Ph.D. in physics but decided to drop out and focus on his then-startup which was doing well (helping emerging markets folks use the Internet for the first time): 'I was often the only Westerner in some small airplane that could barely fly. I pitched in Bangladesh in buildings that kept losing power. But it was meaningful work', says Martti. He then founded dark kitchen startup Epic Foods, 'but scaled it before we nailed it'. He burned out, went to California, and stumbled across a book called 'The China Study', which examines the connections between Western diets and non-communicable diseases. 'What we learned from scientific books, was that the foods that sell are the nasty but tasty ones. So we really needed to find a way to use plant-based proteins so that the taste would be superior to meat. This was a struggle. To control the taste, we needed to control the entire, full food product. So we wanted to make convenient, grab & go food products, and make them accidentally vegan.' REBL Eats was born, producing ready-made plant-based meals, focusing on freshness, and this required them to build their own tech start to run the operations. Martti explains: 'I met the CEOs of the large food companies in Finland. They told us 5 reasons why this would fail, such as that cardboard doesn’t work for food packaging, the prices are too high, it looks homemade and not professional, etc. When we released REBL Eats, we did consumer surveys, and they said that the cardboard felt sustainable, that the price implied that the food is high quality, and that the food looks homemade which is appealing. So that's that.' Just 10 months after launch, REBL Eats has sold 300,000 meals in Finland, is present at 200 supermarkets in 20 cities in Finland and Sweden, and is about to expand to Paris. The company does $1.6M ARR and is cash flow positive. REBL Eats is currently raising €1.5M in equity. The company also wants to meet European retailers who want to expand their plant-based offerings. And REBL Eats is looking for marketing/PR talent, especially in Sweden. Martti can be reached via email and LinkedIn.
Martti Paatela, REBL Eats
Noteworthy
Saudi Arabian AgTech company Red Sea Farms has secured $18.5M in financing to expand its fresh produce line, bringing its total funding to $36.5M. The company, established just 4 years ago, grows things like cucumbers, tomatoes, and snack peppers in (what will soon be 30 hectares of) greenhouse farms that primarily use saltwater to irrigate the crops and cool the actual greenhouses.
Melt&Marble of Sweden announced a €5M Seed round, led by Lever VC and joined by e.g. Be8 Ventures, Good Startup, Nordic FoodTech VC, PINC, and Chalmers Ventures. The company uses precision fermentation to create plant-based beef fat, which gives e.g. plant-based meats a more realistic taste. The company says its still a few years away from full industrial scale.
Image: Vegan meatball / Melt&Marble
Voyage Foods of California banked a $36M Series A round. The company started out researching the baseline molecules that make up e.g. chocolate, peanut butter, and coffee; it then found these exact molecules in other food sources and combined them with other ingredients (e.g. grape seeds, sunflower seed meal, and shea butter) to mimic the real thing. Voyage Foods hopes its products will allow e.g. people allergic to peanuts to enjoy things that taste like peanut butter but doesn't cause allergic reactions.
U.S. restaurant chain Chili's is expanding deployment of server robots (delivered by Bear Robotics) to 51 restaurants.
Tractor Junction of India, an online marketplace for tractors and other farm vehicles, has nabbed $5.7M in fresh funding, backed by e.g. Edge Ventures, Omnivore, AgFunder, and Rockstart Agrifood Fund. Speaking about tractors: Open-source tractors is a thing.
I didn't see the new Tractor movie, but I did see the Trailer. Image: Tractor Junction
Voyager Ventures is a new $100M women-led early-stage climate fund that will invest in startups that can help decarbonize e.g. the food system.
Aleph Farms of Israel says it will commercially launch lab-grown collagen by 2024.
IndieBio startup CellCrine claims it has developed serum-free growth media used to cultivate meat in bioreactors that can reduce growth factor needs (and thus costs) by up to 90%.
Cool robot that autonomously roams almond orchards, seeking and shooting down pest-infested almonds (2 min video).
U.S. metabolic health app startup Levels scored $38M in Series A funding. Levels' platform combines continuous glucose monitoring (think a small device attached to the arm) and a digital app to provide users with personalized insights in the effects that activities such as food and exercise have on key health biomarkers.
Continuous glucose monitoring device
Fermify of Vienna has closed a pre-seed round (at an undisclosed sum). The company aims to produce casein proteins via precision fermentation.
Researchers in Denmark have found genetically identical strains of antibiotic resistant superbug Clostridioies difficile in both pigs and humans, which suggests a link between on-farm antibiotic use and human infections. Some experts fear that drug resistant infections could result in global healthcare costs of over $100 trillion (!) by 2050.
While we're in Denmark: IKEA in Denmark partnered with WWF to create seedballs (in an effort to raise awareness of biodiversity), inspired by IKEA meatballs. These balls made up of soil, clay, and wildflower seed, can be planted in nature to grow into wild plants like chamomile and poppies, thus increasing biodiversity.
Image: IKEA
News from the FoodTech Weekly community
Nowadays (US) is looking for a Product Development Manager... Nilus(Mexico) is recruiting a Marketing Analyst... Melt&Marble (Sweden) is hiringfor different roles including Head of Food Science... Karma (Sweden) wants to bring on a Head of Finance.
Some 1/3 of all produced food is thrown away. That’s pretty stupid. The Food Waste Challenge is an idea competition, accelerating ideas that battle food waste. Apply with your idea, and have a chance to win SEK 50,000 (appr. €4,800), mentors, and exposure. Applications close May 20. Visit foodwastechallenge.org for more info.
Want to share some FoodTech news/project with other FoodTech Weekly subscribers? Hit reply.
Random Stuff
Kevin Kelly, founding editor of Wired Magazine, just turned 70. Here's 103 bits of advice he wish he'd known when he was young. And here's 99 more bits of advice, that he provided for his birthday last year.
Researchers as Cambridge University have designed a robot that can chew and e.g. taste a dish's saltiness.
A California woman was rescued after getting stuck in a non-flush toilet on a remote mountain, after having dropped her cellphone into said toilet.
I love you.
Daniel
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This issue was produced while listening to Sounds Like A Melody by Alphaville. Follow me on LinkedIn and Twitter. And here's the Appetizer which I co-host. Did your brilliant friend forward this to you? Subscribe here.