🍭 Cancelled Candy Colouring

Open-access facilities, development labs and food innovation centres are essential pillars of FoodTech R&D. And this week 5 more were announced.

Launching in the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and soon Copenhagen.

Between them they’ll accelerate the scale up of sustainable food production through cellular agriculture, develop high-quality vegetable protein concentrates and supercharge R&D efforts.

As budgets tighten and resource-sharing becomes critical, these facilities are a lifeline for new innovations. Where would you like to see the next one launched?

This week in FoodTech:
 🥛 Oatly’s first major collab of 2025
🧬 Animal-free casein proteins in oats
🌮 Chipotle Mexican Grill’s $100m fund

The Digest

📈 What’s up? Fungi-based alt meat startup Meati Foods reports that it had a great 2024, nearly doubling its revenues, launching new breakfast patties, and expanding to 7,000 stores.

📉 What’s down? Singapore-based TurtleTree, which makes lactoferrin via precision fermentation, has downsized to a skeleton staff amid funding challenges. And Aussie cultivated meat startup Vow, known for its "woolly mammoth meatball," has reduced its workforce by nearly a third as it pursues a new round of investment. Plus, agricultural chemicals company FMC Corporation has restructured its venture capital arm, FMC Ventures, resulting in staff layoffs, to “optimise operations”.

🇸🇬 Singapore has passed a Food Safety and Security Bill to strengthen its agrifood systems against climate change, supply chain disruptions, and biosecurity risks, while advancing novel proteins and future food innovations to enhance food security.

🥫 The FDA is proposing mandatory front-of-pack nutrition labels for most packaged foods to highlight levels of saturated fat, sodium, and added sugars, aiming to combat chronic disease by providing clearer, readily visible nutritional information. It has also banned the use of Red No.3, a synthetic food dye used in candy, cakes, frozen desserts and cookies, which has been found to cause cancer in rats.

💡 Opinion: “Taste is number one. Always has been, always will be.” Join in or watch from the sidelines.

Fundraising

🌮 Chipotle Mexican Grill has doubled its Cultivate Next venture fund to $100 million, supporting early-stage innovations in agriculture, supply chains, automation, and restaurant technology.

🧀 German fermentation specialist Formo secured €35 million in venture debt from the European Investment Bank to scale production of its animal-free protein products, advance regulatory approval for precision-fermented casein, and expand its micro fermentation platform.

🍼 Portuguese startup CarboCode raised $15 million Series C funding to scale the production of human-identical breast milk molecules, enhance infant formula nutrition, and expand its operations with a new facility, additional staff, and global regulatory approvals.

🍫 Natural energy bar brand Tribe secured £2.4 million to launch its adaptogen-infused 'Protein + Focus' bar and accelerate retail growth and product innovation beyond its core range.

🍔 Seattle-based plant-based food tech company Rebellyous Foods raised $2.4 million as an extension to its Series B funding round, and partnered with Great State Burger to feature its plant-based chicken patty.

Protein

🗝️ Spain’s Heura has opened a new innovation lab in Barcelona's 22@ district to develop sustainable food solutions and register six new patents within nine months, while expanding beyond plant-based meat into categories like cheese, pasta, and snacks.

🍔 The European Patent Office has reinstated Impossible Foods' key EU patent on heme proteins and flavor precursors for meat substitutes after overturning a 2022 revocation for being “insufficiently novel”.

🧀 Californian plant-based food maker Misha’s Inc has acquired New York-based vegan cheese producer Vertage for an undisclosed sum, expanding its dairy-free portfolio to include sliced and shredded cheeses and leveraging Fresh Del Monte’s production and logistics infrastructure.

🥣 Israeli molecular farming startup Plantopia plans to pilot the production of animal-free casein proteins in sprouted oats later this year. It is leveraging oats for cost-effective, scalable indoor production with higher expression levels of all four casein proteins.

🇳🇱 The Netherlands has launched two open-access facilities to scale up sustainable food production through cellular agriculture, supported by a €25 million government investment.

🫛 Arvesta launched Benelux’s first plant-based protein facility, to produce high-quality vegetable protein concentrates from local raw materials like yellow peas.

❌ Nebraska Governor Jim Pillen introduced Legislative Bill 246, which seeks to ban the production and sale of cultivated meat products in the state, citing the need to preserve traditional farming and protect consumers.

Big Food

🇩🇰 Alfa Laval is establishing a Food Innovation Centre in Copenhagen to drive research and development of sustainable solutions for meeting the projected 70% increase in global food demand by 2050.

🥣 YouTuber-founded cereal brand The Sidemen’s Best Cereal has partnered with Netflix to launch a Squid Game 2-inspired Honeycomb Crisp cereal, featuring a flavour reminiscent of the Dalgona Cookie popularised by the series.

🌱 Lidl is the first major retailer to adopt The Vegetarian Society's new Plant-Based Trademark, showcasing it on its Vemondo Plant! range of plant-based meals and ingredients.

✈️ British Airways has partnered with Oatly to offer passengers free oat milk in its jigger format on all short-haul and EuroFlyer flights, marking Oatly’s first major collaboration of 2025.

From the Community

Job opportunities with:

• SolarFoil (Netherlands) as a Chemistry Intern

• Hoxton Farms (UK) as a Lab Operations Specialist

• Redefine Meat (Germany) as a Key Account Manager

• Fork & Good (USA) as a Process Engineer

🧐 How to prepare for an interview when you’re talking about the future of food?

💡 Albertsons is looking to award $300k (cash + industry services) to emerging independent food brands (with $3MM-$10MM in net sales). Find out more

🇳🇱 Join us at the a FoodHack Meetup in Basel, Ljubljana and Lausanne - sign up here

💸 Add your top VC partners to this ever-growing list of Europe’s Climate VCs.

🍳 Just for fun: When the startup pitch doesn’t match the product.

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Until next time - Stay Hungry