🍻 Beer lovers, hop to attention

Carlsberg has just uncapped what it claims is the most detailed genetic map of hops ever created,  and it's sharing the research freely with scientists, breeders and growers around the world. 

Why should the industry raise a glass? Because hops sit at the heart of beer's flavour, aroma and economics, and climate pressures are making them harder to grow consistently. By unlocking the hop genome, Carlsberg is giving breeders a powerful new tool to develop more resilient varieties faster, helping safeguard supplies while opening the door to entirely new flavour profiles. Cheers to that!

This week in FoodTech:

🏭 Sun Bear Biofuture built a fermentation facility at 10% of the usual cost
🍼 Nestlé’s tapping Helaina to make better infant formula
🐈‍⬛ Research shows that cats prefer cultivated hamster

The Digest

🚜 RespectFarms has opened the world’s first cultivated meat farm on dairy farmer Corné van Leeuwen’s working farm in South Holland, to show how farmers can add cell-cultured meat production as a new income stream alongside traditional agriculture. 

🇯🇵 Japan’s Consumer Affairs Agency has released draft safety checkpoints for cultivated meat and seafood, outlining the cell-line, production, contamination, allergen and toxicity data companies may need to submit as the country moves closer to a formal regulatory pathway for cell-cultured foods.

🐈 A new study from researchers at Ghent University and Czech cultivated-meat company BeneMeat Technologies found that cats preferred cultivated hamster over chicken in the first published feline feeding trial of its kind.

New in Funding

🍴 Innovorder, based in France, raised €20 million in a funding round led by UL Invest to scale its cloud-native SaaS platform for restaurant digitalisation.

🫖 US-based The Ryl Co., parent of zero-sugar functional iced tea brand Ryl Tea, raised $20 million Series C funding in a round led by Purchase Capital to expand retail and direct-store delivery distribution and build its innovation pipeline.

♻️ The Proscale project secured €8.5 million in funding, including €6.9 million from the EU-backed Circular Bio-based Europe Joint Undertaking, to scale production of sustainable single-cell proteins for food and feed applications from food industry waste streams using microbial fermentation.

👶🏻 London-based Lune & Wild, a female-founded, chef-led baby and children’s food brand that creates organic, nutritionist-developed meals for young children, raised €2.3 million in a Series A round led by Guinness Ventures to scale its operations.

🇫🇮 Finnish food company Raisio secured €1.8 million from Business Finland for a €4.5 million four-year project to develop functional fibre ingredients from grain-processing side streams, with Raisio contributing the remaining €2.7 million to fund pilot-scale R&D, application validation and new commercial opportunities in areas such as dairy-free products, sports nutrition and food fortification. 

🍪 US functional cookie brand Fields Good raised $1.8 million pre-seed funding in a round led by Female Founders Fund. It makes cookies formulated to support focus, sleep and protein intake, and will use the funding to scale its direct-to-consumer business and support future national retail distribution. 

💰 Purdue University’s DIAL Ventures announced the first close of its Fund II to build and de-risk AI-driven agrifood startups through its venture studio model, with the next programme set to focus on AI tools, reduced farm inputs and stronger food supply chains.

New in Startups

✅ Berlin-based Formo has obtained self-affirmed GRAS status in the US for its precision-fermented cow-free casein protein, enabling it to sell to food manufacturers via a new US subsidiary and commercialisation partnership with RxFood Ingredients, as it shifts focus from its discontinued Frischhain consumer cheese brand to B2B speciality protein ingredients. 

🏭 UK precision fermentation startup Sun Bear Biofuture, which makes sustainable cocoa butter, palm oil and other fat alternatives from yeast, has successfully scaled production using a £25,000 pilot facility built with repurposed brewery and dairy equipment, that cost just 10% of a conventional precision fermentation facility.

🤝🏼 Finland’s Solar Foods has entered the US consumer market through a partnership with sports nutrition brand Ambrosia Collective, which is test-marketing a protein powder made with Solar Foods’ gas-fermented protein ahead of a planned nationwide rollout this summer.

Plant-Based

🫘 USDA researchers have developed a non-GMO “Super” soybean with near-zero beany and painty off-flavours, using selective breeding to create a more neutral-tasting soy protein that could help to broaden the appeal of plant-based foods.

🌱 Sweden-based Kale Foods, the distribution arm of plant-based investor Kale United, has acquired Swedish plant-based meat brand Färsodlarna from Novax in an undisclosed deal, adding Färsodlarna’s Swedish-grown, soy-free meat alternatives to its portfolio.

🧀 Swiss vegan creamery New Roots launched Le Gratiné, a lupine-based grated cheese alternative for hot dishes such as pizza, pasta and gratins.

📈 Vegetarian fast-food chain Clover Food Lab has reversed its planned closure after securing a last-minute investor deal, allowing it to reopen core Boston and Cambridge locations after public support helped save the 17-year-old local favourite.

Big Food

🍼 Nestlé has partnered with New York-based startup Helaina to develop infant formula using Helaina’s precision-fermented human lactoferrin protein, Effera, aiming to create a safer, more consistent formula ingredient that better closes the nutritional gap with breast milk. 

🍻 Denmark’s Carlsberg Research Laboratory published open-access hop genome research to help breeders develop more climate-resilient, higher-yielding and flavour-diverse hop varieties for future beer production.

🍫 French malt producer Soufflet Malt and fermentation innovation platform Ferments du Futur have launched an 18-month research project to develop cocoa alternatives from fermented sprouted grains.

💵 IFF has agreed to sell its Food Ingredients business, which makes texturants, emulsifiers, plant-based solutions and other speciality ingredients, to funds advised by Luxembourg-headquartered CVC Capital Partners for $4.3 billion.

🥕 Ingredion has acquired Benicaros from Dutch health ingredients company NutriLeads, adding the upcycled carrot-pomace prebiotic fibre to its functional ingredients portfolio to support gut health, immunity, clean-label and sustainability-focused food, beverage and supplement applications.

From the Community

🙌 The High Protein revolution is here. Join our next FoodHack Meetup in Dubai on June 9th.

😭 Just for fun: Does LinkedIn need a crying emoji?

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Until next time - Stay Hungry