🌋 Volcanic fields for crop yields

PLUS: Footing a $12 trillion food system bill

November 10, 2023

Fancy spending an evening with fellow FoodTech investors, founders and operators who share your mission?

Following sold out events in Singapore, Istanbul and Lisbon, these 10 cities will next host a free FoodHack Meetup near you.

So mark your calendar and come on down and join us at one (or more).

This week in Food:

  • Spanish veggie burger warriors

  • Konnyaku functional fruit jellies

  • $12.7 trillion hidden food costs

The Digest

Credit: FAO

📈 What’s up? New analysis from FAIRR Initiative shows that GHG emissions from the world’s 20 largest meat and dairy producers increased by 3.28% in the last year.

📉 What’s down? Beyond Meat posted a net $70.5 million loss in Q3 and reduced its full year forecasts for the second time this year, leading analysts to predict that it “will need to tap the financial markets in 2024 to maintain operations.”

🇳🇱 Two municipalities in the Netherlands have voted to ban the advertising of meat and dairy products in public spaces, alongside fossil fuel-dependent products such as combustion engine cars and airline tickets.

📝 A new report by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization shows that hidden costs in the global food system amount to $12.7 trillion, with the majority of this value attributed to health-related costs.

🍄 A visual of the fungal tree of life.

🐾 The career path of unicorn founders, mapped.

🌋 Good watch: Why farmers are sprinkling volcanic dust on their fields.

New in Funding

Credit: Dreamfarm

🌾 Talus Renewables, based in New York, raised $22 million Series A funding to accelerate production of its green ammonia technology, which uses water, air, and renewable power to create sustainable fertiliser. How they’ll use the capital.

🥗 UK-based Letoon Holding secured £20 million in a growth equity commitment from Nimbus Capital as it prepares for a London IPO. The vegetable waste firm has developed a way to use ultrasonic technology to extract nutrients from plants and vegetables, which then have applications in the food, cosmetics and pharmaceutical sectors.

🧀 Italian startup Dreamfarm secured €5 million pre-seed funding to develop the perfect vegan mozzarella. Its clean-label plant-based mozzarella is made using a base of fermented almonds and comes traditionally packaged as a ball suspended in liquid. See how it melts.

🇫🇷 French startup Nūmi, which makes breast milk from cell-cultured mammary glands, raised €3 million pre-seed funding as it gears up to file for regulatory approval in the US, followed by Europe and Asia. Here’s why they received investment.

🇨🇱 Loads, based in Chile, secured $2.05 million in a funding round led by Nazca. Its aim is to bolster the food supplier network across Latin America by streamlining the importer process so that food products are supplied easily, and it already works with more than 700 importers and 300 suppliers.

👀 Here’s a round up of all the latest funding rounds this week including high-tech sensors to track and trace waste and from stealth to seed for a personalised nutrition startup.

💸 Good read: The what, why and how of impact investing.

New in Startups

Credit: Bene Meat Technologies

🐈 Czech startup Bene Meat Technologies has registered its cultivated meat pet food with the European Feed Materials Register, enabling the startup to launch its pet food product in the EU, and now plans to boost its manufacturing to produce several tonnes of cell-cultured meat daily by mid-2024. Is it a sign for wider approval?

🍭 Israeli startup SolvEat unveiled its new bioactive solution, made from a composition of eight herbs, designed to help maintain healthy blood sugar levels when used as part of a regular diet.

🛵 Turkish instant grocery delivery startup Getir has acquired New York-based online grocery delivery service FreshDirect to expand its US presence and “further its strategy as a consolidator in its category”.

🏭 Lithuanian insect producer Divaks is partnering with Swiss technology group Bühler to build its first commercial-scale yellow mealworm plant, which will produce protein for use in sectors including meat alternatives, sports nutrition, snacks, confectionery, and premium pet food.

🤖 Remy Robotics, based in Barcelona, launched into the US with a robot-powered virtual restaurant brand in New York City called Better Days, in which AI-powered robots prepare food based on algorithmic recipes that factor in delivery times and other logistical elements. Here’s how it works.

🐟 China’s CellX, which operates the country’s largest cultivated seafood facility, announced a new fermentation program aimed at producing mycelium-derived proteins for alt meat and dairy, functional, and hybrid products. 

Plant Based

Credit: Vacka x Libre Foods

🇪🇸 Spanish plant-based startups Väcka and Libre Foods have partnered to launch The Veggie Burger Warriors, a new campaign offering 100% vegan burgers in restaurants across the country 6th-12th November.

🐟 Israeli startup Oshi is making its US foodservice market debut with the launch of its flagship product, Oshi Salmon-Inspired Fillets, at upscale New York-based vegan Italian restaurant Coletta.

🤠 Cheese brand The Laughing Cow unveiled a plant-based version of its mini soft cheese triangles, made from almonds and fortified with calcium and vitamin B12, in the UK, and claims to be the UK’s first plant-based cheese to be sold in portions.

🍄 Mycelium meat producer Meati Foods is expanding its Eat Meati line of animal-free protein with the launch of four new products: Meati Crispy Bites, Meati Garlic & Pepper Steak, Meati Spicy Crispy Cutlet, and Meati Italian Seasoned Cutlet. Take a closer look.

👨‍🍳 Vegan author and celebrity chef Matthew Kenney is expanding his Plant City F&B concept to China in partnership with global scale-up firm The Wellness Agency.

🏆 Meet the winners of the Earthshot Prize. And a scoop on a plant based category next year.

Big Food

Credit: Kerry

🧁 Kerry launched Biobake Fresh Rich, an enzyme that helps sweet baked goods stay fresher for longer, significantly reducing food waste.

👎 Environmental and consumer rights groups have filed a legal complaint against Coca-Cola, Nestlé and Danone for allegedly using misleading claims on plastic water bottles sold across Europe, citing “suspected widespread infringement of consumer protection law” since the plastic bottles are never made wholly of recycled materials.

🍕Nestlé is partnering with food delivery startup Wonder Group, in a deal which includes a $100 million investment. Nestle will manufacture pizza and pasta for Wonder's kitchen equipment, as well as selling the kitchen equipment to customers.

🇹🇼 Taiwanese fruit product manufacturer Baigong Food unveiled a line of functional fruit jellies made with a base of konnyaku, a starchy plant native to southwest China, including probiotic and lutein versions for gut and eye health.

🦃 Nestle USA, Inc.’s frozen pizza brand DiGiorno launched a Thanksgiving Pizza, topped with turkey, gravy sauce, diced sweet potatoes, green beans, cranberries, mozzarella cheese and cheddar cheese.

🏭 Global leader in food, beverage, health, biosciences, and scent, IFF, opened its first dedicated food and beverage lab in South Korea, where it plans to deliver “the best-in-class innovations to customers” in the country.

🌴 How the makers of M&Ms and Snickers, AKA Mars are radically reimagining their supply chain to end deforestation.

HackTrends: Ocean CDR

The ocean and the climate are inextricably linked. The health of the climate drives that of the ocean, and vice-versa. There’s been a ton of focus on atmospheric (aka land-based) CDR in recent years - but that’s been at the expense of the planet’s biggest inbuilt carbon sink: the ocean.

🔎 Discover in the full HackTrend Report:
- 2x case studies (Ebb Carbon, Brilliant Planet)
- The why, the challenges and the figures behind the space
- List of 14 companies harnessing the sea to store carbon
- Expert insights from Adrian Bührer, Ubermorgen Ventures, Florian Schabus, Planet A Ventures, Ashley Lin, Pronoe and Roberta Franchi, Counteract VC

From the Community

Are you hiring? Post the job here 

🔥 New job openings:

🏆 Meet the 10 finalists of GLOCAL’s pitch competition.

📸 Founder photos: The good, the bad and the mad from Sifted.

🙋‍♀️ ICYMI ClimateHack’s list of 30 women angels in Climate to know

🎧 Good listen: How challenger brands can become household brands.

👋 Join the MENA Food & Beverage Pitch Lounge online next Thursday 16th November. Head this way to register for the inaugural event.

🇳🇱 The Free From Food Amsterdam - Startup Investor Pitch takes place in Amsterdam on 22nd November. Full details here.

🏋️‍♀️ Just for fun: Become a founder, they said. It will be fun, they said

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Curated by Nicola and Laura 

Until next time - Stay Hungry