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- FoodTech Weekly #244 by Daniel S. Ruben
FoodTech Weekly #244 by Daniel S. Ruben
News on FoodTech, food, and society
Daniel S. Ruben
May 02, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 14 minutes
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#244
Hi there,
In two weeks’ time I’ll be at HackSummit in beautiful Lausanne, Switzerland, with 700+ ClimateTech (incl. FoodTech!) founders, funders, and corporates for a few fantastic days of networking, innovative food, insights, side events, and much more. I’ll also moderate a few things on stage, incl. the FoodTech World Cup.
If you get the chance, go — it’s one of the best events of the year. Use FINAL50 for a 15% ticket discount.
This week's rundown:
🪰 $3.8M to build India’s largest insect-as-feed factory
🪢 Cultivated cacao startup Kokomodo gets acquired
💹 The country where steel is cheaper than bottled water
Let's go!
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💰 Funding
🏴 Ace Aquatec has banked £10M in usd ($13.3M) in funding, consisting of £7.5M in equity funding and about £2.5M through a debt facility. The round was led by Stolt Ventures and joine by Scottish Enterprise and Aqua-Spark. Ace Aquatec develops precision aquaculture tech to make fish farming more efficient and humane while protecting the environment. I interviewed the company’s CEO Nathan Pyne-Carter for FTW a year ago.
🇮🇳 GreenGrahi has closed a 32 crore rupee ($3.8M) Seed round, led by Avaana Capital and joined by e.g. Huddle Ventures, Campus Fund and Blume Founders Fund. The startup plans to establish India’s largest black soldier fly factory, which will produce insect protein, oils, and biofertilizer.
🏴 Green Bioactives has secured a grant of up to £1.1M ($1.4M) from Scottish Enterprise; the company produces sustainable ingredients using a technology called plant cell culture.
🔗 Israeli AgriFoodTech company Kokomodo, which cultivates cacao from plant cells, has been acquired by Pluri in a transaction valued at $4.5M.
🇺🇾 Yeda Health has raised a $300K pre-seed round led by OurCrowd LATAM Labs. The company uses clinical data to predict how individuals will respond to different treatments for diabetes and obesity. Combined with continuous glucose monitoring, user-uploaded meal photos, and connected fitness devices tracking daily activity, Yeda can deliver personalized recommendations that improve health outcomes.
Yeda Health
🎙️ Investment Climate: Stephan van Sint Fiet of Vivici on how to get funded in 2025
This week, Alex Shandrovsky met with Stephan van Sint Fiet, CEO of Vivici, which aims to make precision fermentation dairy protein a commercial reality. Stephan shares how Vivici navigated regulatory approval with a "no questions" GRAS letter from the FDA, tackled negative gross margins during early scale-up, and secured a €34M raise led by Dutch pension fund PGGM and InvestNL. The conversation can be found on Spotify and Apple.
Top three findings from this conversation:
Market Entry Strategy: Focus on Premium Whey Protein Segment. Vivici is initially targeting the premium whey protein isolate market (not the commodity whey market). ‘We compete against the high-quality whey protein isolates that trade for $18 to $25 per kilogram.’
Initial Volumes at Suboptimal Gross Margins Are Part of the Plan. Vivici accepts that early batches will have negative gross margins until scaling improves unit economics. ‘At the beginning, there is a valley of death that you have to cross...once you scale that to more interesting volumes, you immediately become gross margin positive.’
Fundraising Strategy: Focus on Experienced Partners and Scaling Proof. Vivici raised €34M led by a Dutch pension fund (PGGM) and InvestNL, after demonstrating successful scale-up to 75,000L. ‘We had fully scaled the process...10 liters, 1,500 liters, 15,000 liters, 75,000 liters.’
🧐 Noteworthy
🚫 Norway is banning the marketing of unhealthy foods — such as candy, soft drinks, ice cream, and energy drinks — towards children.
💺 Lufthansa Group says it’s using AI to understand why in-flight food waste happens, so that it can optimize meal selection and portion sizes in the future.
📈 The Guardian digs into Denmark’s wholegrain revolution; spearheaded by the Danish Whole Grain Partnership, the country has boosted its daily per capita consumption of whole grains from 36 grams (1.2 oz) in 2008 to 82 grams (2.9 oz) in 2019, the highest intake in Europe. In comparison, the average Briton eats 20 grams (0.7 oz) of whole grains per day.
⚖️ North Dakota is set to become the first U.S. state to implement a law that provides legal protections for pesticide manufacturers.
📉 Early-stage investments are declining in European FoodTech startups; funding is down 25% at Seed and 15% at Series A, new data from DigitalFoodLab shows.
💡 A new State of the Industry report from Good Food Institute shows that global sales of plant-based alternatives increased by 5% between 2023 and 2024, to $28.6B, with non-dairy alternatives being the bulk of that number. The report also showed e.g. that the lack of price parity is a major obstacle; plant-based meat on average costs 82% more than animal-based meat.
🌾 Emirati agricultural experts have developed a wheat variety with 19.3% native protein content, claiming its the highest level recorded globally.
🥛 Asahi Group Japan has introduced a new product, LIKE MILK, marketed as Japan’s first yeast-derived non-animal milk. The company says the product is free from the 28 major allergens typically found in food, and that the nutritional profile is comparable to cow’s milk, but with 38% less fat.
🥀 Container farming startup Freight Farms, which had raised at least $43M and planned to go public in a $147M SPAC in 2023, has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.
🌍 News from the FoodTech Weekly community
👨🏻💻 Metaflow (🇩🇪 / 🌍) is looking for a Quality Manager.
🎤️ AgStar is the platform that connects startups with key players in the Latin American AgrifoodTech ecosystem: corporates, investors, accelerators, and experts. It will take place on September 25 in Medellín, Colombia, with a curated agenda designed to foster strategic meetings, real business opportunities, and long-term partnerships. Join us and be part of the agrifood innovation movement in the region.
🎤 AgriVenture Finland 2025, the largest smart farming and sustainable food chain event in the Nordics, will be held on May 27-28, 2025, at the Bioeconomy Campus in Saarijärvi, Central Finland. The program features keynotes (e.g. Nordic FoodTech VC’s Lauri Reuter), a startup pitching competition, product demos (e.g. of field robots) and much more. Register by May 9, 2025 — tickets are free.
📣 ProVeg Incubator has announced its latest cohort of 10 innovative startups advancing sustainable solutions, from plant-based seafood and precision-fermented proteins to upcycled ingredients and novel fats. The cohort includes Finally Foods, Updairy, KaYama Foods, Freundeskreis, Planeat, Mindful FÜD, Profillet, Meatless Kingdom, MycoVibes Biotech, and Brew Bites.
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🎲 Random Stuff
🍋 Food-inspired baby names — including e.g. Lemon, Kale, Maple, Dijon, and Rye (h/t Julia Glotz)
🌸 Japan's 97-year-old cherry blossom guardian (h/t Ambrook).
🧊 $100 for six cubes of ice from Greenland.
😱 The invasive Northern Snakehead fish can ‘walk’ on land, breathe air, and survive out of water for several days. The U.S. authorities want people to kill them (note to self: Don’t forget to thank Smithsonian for giving me new material for my nightmares).
💧 In Japan, steel has become cheaper than bottled water, attributed to intense steel distributor competition.
🏁 Some photos from The Corgi Derby which was just held at the Musselburgh Racecourse in Scotland.
I love you.
Daniel
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🎵 This issue was produced while listening to You & Me - Flume Remix by Disclosure, Eliza Doolittle, Flume
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