FoodTech Weekly

Some highlights from FoodTech Weekly #207 (https://lnkd.in/dkhGh_7p) sent this morning: 💰🇺🇸 Vertical farming scaleup Plenty® of the U.S. is forming a joint venture with Mawarid in a $680M deal to build a network of indoor farms in the GCC countries over the next five years, starting with premium strawberries. The GCC currently imports more than 85% of their food 💶 🇫🇮 Onego Bio of Finland has secured €14M (appr. $15.2M) in funding from European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency (EISMEA) Accelerator and other investors, bringing its total funding to date north of $70M; the company produces bio-identical egg protein using precision fermentation   💶 🇳🇱 NoPalm Ingredients of Wageningen, the Netherlands, has harvested €5M (appr. $5.4M) in funding from Rubio Impact Ventures, Oost NL, Fairtree Elevant Ventures, Willow Capital Investments, The Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO) and other private investors. The company upcycles locally sourced ag sidestreams such as e.g. potato peels and uses non-GMO yeasts to ferment these ingredients into yeast oils that can substitute palm oil 💶 🇩🇰 Agrobiomics of Copenhagen, Denmark has bagged €4M (appr. $4.3M) in funding from NOON Ventures. The company develops a biological solution to increase the climate resilience of plants (to abiotic stressors like drought and salinity) 💰🇺🇸 Monarch Tractor of the U.S. has raised a record-breaking (for ag robotics) $133M funding round for its self-driving electric tractors. The round was co-led by Astanor and HH-CTBC Partnership. To date, Monarch has secured $220M+ in funding 💰🇧🇷 Meu Pescado of Brazil has reeled in a fresh catch of $420K in funding led by Aimorés Investimentos and Japan’s Incubate Fund, and joined by angel investors. The company helps fish farmers with limited internet connectivity to monitor animal health, feed use, and water quality 🪦🇸🇪 Swedish insect producer (for food and animal feed) Tebrito has filed for bankruptcy. Founded in 2016, Tebrito had raised a total of SEK 45M (appr. $4.1M) and was rearing mealworms (aka Tenebrio molitor) 💰🇺🇸 AgFunder VC, which invests in AgriFoodTech startups globally, has announced the closing of its fourth early-stage fund, Fund IV, at an oversubscribed $102M 💰🇩🇪 German agrivoltaics startup diveo has netted a €200K (appr. $217K) preseed round; the company merges solar energy production and agriculture 🐛🇬🇧 Insect-as-feed company Entocycle of the U.K. has opened a new insect rearing R&D facility at the University of Leeds It also announced that it has raised a further $2.6M in funding. This follows the company’s $5.4M Series A round in January 2023 💶 🇫🇮 Finnish protein from air-company Solar Foods plans to go public on the Helsinki Stock Exchange 🤩 New job at C40 Cities (U.S.) ...and much more! Subscribe now at: https://lnkd.in/d8mUXXH5 #foodtechweekly #FoodTech #agtech #startups #funding #tech #innovation

Excerpt from last week's FoodTech Weekly conversation Niyati Gupta of Fork & Good, Inc. (https://lnkd.in/dxdZ9hse): Niya was born in India, grew up in Hong Kong, and spent her childhood summers on the family farm in India. ‘I became obsessed with how we produced food; I felt it was unsustainable in terms of farmer income, planetary income, and more — I was shocked’, Niya remembers. She spent 15 years working in ag, at the The World Bank, McKinsey & Company, and Syngenta, helping make supply chains become more resilient (she somehow also found the time to do a BA in economics at Yale University and a dual MBA/MPAID at Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School). Niya became an agtech investor, and then co-founded her first company, ComCrop, which does hydroponic rooftop farming in Singapore. She heard about cultivated meat but was skeptical; ‘I felt it was guilt free meat for the 1%’, Niya says. After modeling out cultivated meat and doing a techno economic analysis, she decided to establish cultivated meat startup Fork & Good in early 2019 together with Gabor Forgacs. ‘The existing meat supply chain is being negatively impacted. Meat companies and meat retailers are already feeling the effects of not enough land and water, and experience a lot of volatility in price and quality. African Swine Fever alone knocked out a quarter of global pork production and we still haven’t recovered 100%. So these companies want controllable processes end to end. They can blend our cultivated meat into their products. Functionally it works the same’, Niya explains. She says costs keep coming down, meaning Fork & Good’s cultivated meat will be cheaper than conventional meat, and notes: ‘I’m coming from farming. I don’t think livestock is going anywhere. The only way cultivated meat becomes interesting is if there’s a big delta of improvement and it is more efficient. Incremental doesn’t work. Our product is not a total replacement for livestock. It’s a climate adaptable way to grow meat, and keep meat affordable.’ Niya says the company could already sell its product at a positive gross margin, and that the company has joint development agreements in place with multi billion dollar meat companies. What’s holding Fork & Good back is the regulatory factor, but here Niya believes the approval will happen sometime between late 2025 and mid 2026. Fork & Good, which has secured $22M so far, is currently raising a Series A+ round joined by e.g. True Ventures and Leaps by Bayer; it is already 80% committed. The company is also always eager to speak to food companies and chefs interested in their products, especially in the U.S. Fork & Good also wants to talk to experts in dairy safety standards, and to chat with talent focused on manufacturing, such as food safety persons deeply rooted in science. Niya can be reached via LinkedIn.

Some highlights from FoodTech Weekly #206 (https://lnkd.in/dxdZ9hse) sent Friday morning: 💰🇺🇸 NovoNutrients of California has brought home $18M in Series A funding, led by Woodside Energy and CM Venture Capital. The company uses microbes to upcycle industrial CO2 waste into a sustainable protein used for food as well as animal feed 💶 🇫🇷 French startup Nutriearth — which uses insects to enhance flours and oils for human consumption as well as ingredients for animal feed with vitamin D3 —has scored €8M (appr. $8.7M) in fresh funding (h/t DigitalFoodLab)   💰🇺🇸 Biotech startup Digestiva of Davis, California has hauled in a $18.4M Series A funding round led by (global sugar cane processor) Magdalena, and joined by UC Investment, The March Fund, and Astanor. Digestiva’s innovation enhances protein bioavailability, allowing people and animals to ‘maximize nutritional benefits from existing diets without increasing protein consumption’. 💰🇺🇸 Mitti Labs (HQ’ed in NYC and with a subsidiary in Bengaluru, India) has harvested $3M in funding from e.g. Lightspeed Ventures Partners and Voyager Ventures, to help rice farmers in India improve farming practices while cutting methane emissions 🐈✅ U.K. based Meatly will begin selling its cultivated chicken meat to manufacturers as early as this year, after the U.K. just became the first country in Europe to provide regulatory approval for cultivated chicken for use in pet food. 🪦🇸🇪 Swedish mycoprotein producer Mycorena has filed for bankruptcy, after facing financial headwinds. It aims to restructure under new ownership. The company had raised €35M (appr. $38M) in several subsequent rounds of funding 🐛✅ Singapore just approved 16 insect species for human food and animal feed consumption, a boon to the country’s insect as food and feed ecosystem. 💰🇨🇦 Canadian vertical farming company Fieldless Farms (which previously had raised $20M+) has secured funding through the Southern Ontario Fund for Investment in Innovation (SOFII). While the amount is unknown, SOFII program funding ranges from CAD $150K to CAD $500K 💰🇦🇪 Natural Ventures of Abu Dhabi and the Netherlands has closed its inaugural fund with $100M in commitments, aiming to invest to advance sustainability in global food and water. Meanwhile, VC firm Cultivation Capital has launched a new $20M AgTech investment fund 💰🇨🇦 Canadian AgTech startup Ceragen has raised CAD $2.7M (appr. $2M) in Seed funding; the company develops soil microbes that are supplied to the roots of plants to help boost crop yields 💡 Conversation with Niyati Gupta  of Fork & Good, Inc. 🤩 New jobs at New School Foods (Canada) @and Good Food Institute Europe (BE/FR/DE/NL/ES/UK) ...and much more! Subscribe now at: https://lnkd.in/d8mUXXH5 #foodtechweekly #FoodTech #agtech #startups #funding #tech #innovation

Some highlights from FoodTech Weekly #205 (https://lnkd.in/dqyzAMeu) sent this morning: 💰🇧🇷 Brazilian AgTech startup Gênica has banked 68M reais (about $12.5M) from e.g. Mitsubishi Agrex and Banco do Brasil for its biological crop treatments that also help improve soil health 💰🇨🇱 ByBug of Chile has scooped up a $1.4M Seed round from Südlich Capital, Arpegio VC, GRIDX, Halcyon Venture Partners, and Atento Capital. The company aims to produce recombinant proteins from genetically engineered black soldier flies, which it claims is cheaper and more scalable than using precision fermentation 💰🇩🇰 Danish startup Matr Foods, which develops plant-based meat alternatives using traditional fungal fermentation techniques, has received an investment from Novo Holdings. The sum is said to be double digit in DKK millions, meaning at least $1.4M 💶 🇫🇷 French AgTech startup Seabex has hauled a Seed round backed by Water Unite Impact; the company uses AI and satellites to optimize water usage 💶 🇫🇷 Also from France, The VERY Food Co. Co has bagged €850K (appr. $920K) for its functional plant-based food ingredients aimed at replacing animal products. The round was backed by e.g. APOK Invest, Bpifrance, and business angels. The VERY Food Co has previously received investment from Big Idea Ventures 💰🇺🇸 Boston, U.S. startup Foray Bioscience has landed $3M in Seed funding from ReGen Ventures, The Engine Ventures, Susquehanna Sustainable Investments, Understorey Ventures, Superorganism, and others. The company has developed a predictive plant cell culture platform, allowing it to grow harvest-free plant-based materials, seeds, and molecules 💶 🇪🇸 Vanetta Foods of Galicia, Spain, which produces plant-based alternatives to meat, has closed a €400K (appr. $430K) funding round, mostly from local business angels 🇺🇸 🍎 U.S. startup Prism has developed a controlled atmosphere container that can be stored in restaurants’ walk-in fridges, allowing restaurants to extend shelf life of produce by 2-3x (and sometimes up to 8x as long) 💰🇨🇦 Tall Grass Ventures of Calgary, Canada has secured $32M CAD (appr. US $23.5M) for its first fund that will invest in early-stage AgTech and FoodTech companies, mainly in Canada 🧑🔬🤖 Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers have designed a robotic system designed to e.g. pack groceries, and it looks pretty cool. 📉 🐟 Wild salmon is struggling in the Baltic, because it can’t find enough Baltic herring to feed on, as Baltic herring gets scooped up by industrial trawlers to be ground up and become fish feed — for farmed Norwegian salmon. 🤩 New jobs at Cultivated Biosciences ...and much more! Subscribe now at: https://lnkd.in/d8mUXXH5 #foodtechweekly #FoodTech #agtech #startups #funding #tech #innovation

Excerpt from last week's FoodTech Weekly conversation Giacomo Cattaneo of FOOD FOUNDERS Studio (https://lnkd.in/dqtrUVwF): Giacomo started as a mechanical engineer and went on to do a Ph.D. in Innovation Management at ETH Zürich and Aarhus University. He worked for a couple of startups, and then joined AB InBev. Says Giacomo: ‘It’s the world’s largest brewery, and they have 5M tons of spent grain, essentially barley from which the starch has been removed, and it’s currently used as cattle feed or just burnt. We had to figure out what the global business case at scale was.’ The result was EverGrain, a spinout where Giacomo became co-founder. The company upcycled the spent grain into proteins and fibers (used for e.g. pasta, bread, in sports nutrition etc), with a 90% reduction in GHGs. After having built a European team of experts and secured $40M for a factory in Belgium, Giacomo felt he was ready for a new challenge to push for food systems change. 'The main problem I saw was that Big Food struggles to build the future of food. Internal innovation budgets are decreasing, focus is shifting from disruption to core business, from building to buying innovation, so I felt someone had to build this innovation externally’, Giacomo explains and continues: ‘It’s really everything across the value chain — ingredients, formulation, production — whatever you need to delight consumers.’ Giacomo noticed there was a ton of cool, innovative stuff being developed in academic institutions that had no chance of getting to market. ‘Tech transfer offices struggle to commercialize food, relying on a playbook that works primarily for biotech and pharma’, Giacomo notes and adds: ‘Due to this, a huge amount of breakthrough tech risk go to sleep in academic papers, and I felt “hell no”, we need to give these technologies a chance to impact the real world’. He wanted to build a platform representing the problems of industry and consumers, to pull as many tech solutions as possible out of academia, by incubating the tech in a venture studio, where the Food Founders team and a new, cross-functional leadership team could transform the idea into a thriving venture. Thus Food Founders Studio was born. The studio brings every new venture to a solid pre-seed stage within 12 months, investing €1M per venture (incl. overhead for Food Founders’ fixed costs) in return for 30% equity. ‘We effectively bridge the gap of brilliant research never being commercialized, but we also create a unique pipeline for the industry to tap into’, Giacomo observes. The studio will be very curated, just building one new venture per year, and derisking it significantly; the startups will eventually exit so Food Founders earns ROI. ‘The ultimate impact we’d like to see is to move the needle for the 30% carbon footprint that food has. Food Founders is currently raising €3M for the first three ventures. He can be reached via LinkedIn.

Some highlights from FoodTech Weekly #204 (https://lnkd.in/dqtrUVwF) sent this morning: 💶 🇪🇪 eAgronom of Tallinn, Estonia, which develops a crop farming business management and planning software tool for farmers, has banked €10M (appr. $11M) in Series A2 funding, led by Swedbank and joined by e.g. Icos Capital, Soulmates Ventures, and SmartCap Green Fund 💰🇭🇺 Hungarian agtech startup scoutlabs has harvested $2M in Seed funding for its affordable, AI-powered insect monitoring. The round was backed by e.g. Interactive Venture Partners, SVG Ventures | THRIVE, DEPO Ventures , and Impact Ventures 💶 🇩🇪 Vytal | The reuse system of Cologne, Germany, which develops reusable food packaging for e.g. restaurants, canteens, and retailers, has netted €6M (appr. $6.5M) in a new funding round led by Emerald Technology Ventures 💰🇺🇸 Atlantic Fish Co of North Carolina, U.S., has reeled in a $1M pre-seed round from e.g. Georgetown Angel Investor Network and ProVeg Incubator 💶 🇳🇱 Aurea Imaging of Utrecht, the Netherlands, has nabbed €2.8M (appr. $3M) in Series A funding from e.g. Pymwymic, ROM Utrecht Region, Knop Ventures, Goeie Grutten Impact Fonds, and BarUni Family Fund. The company provides agronomic intelligence tools for orchard management 💰🇺🇸 ProNovo of Costa Rica, which develops insect-based animal feed (using Black Soldier Flies), has scored $2M in funding from the IFC - International Finance Corporation (part of the World Bank Group). The company will use the new funding to launch a new plant capable of producing 4,000 tons of product annually; their animal feed requires much less land and water than conventional animal feed 💰🇪🇸 MOA foodtech of Spain has completed a $3M Series A round, led by Icos Capital and joined by e.g. Viscofan and SODENA. The company develops an AI-powered B2B discovery platform for alt proteins and sustainable ingredients for the food and bev industry 💰🇪🇸 Spanish fund manager Seaya has secured €300M for its latest fund for climate technologies, Andromeda, which will invest €7M to €40M in Series A to C stage startups in several spaces, including sustainable food systems 🤖🇨🇭 EPFL scientists are working on a fully edible robot, which they hope one day will e.g. reduce electronic waste, help deliver nutrition and medicines to people and animals in need, monitor health, and even unlock novel gastronomical experiences 🐟📉 Members of the Global Salmon Initiative have since 2013 cut the use of antibiotics with 75%, the use of fishmeal and fish oil by 51% and 30% respectively, and cut the treatment of sea lice by 60% (self-reported data) (h/t AGFO) 💡Conversation with Giacomo Cattaneo of FOOD FOUNDERS Studio 🤩 New jobs at Improvin' (Sweden) ...and much more! Subscribe now at: https://lnkd.in/d8mUXXH5 #foodtechweekly #FoodTech #agtech #startups #funding #tech #innovation

Excerpt from last week's FoodTech Weekly conversation Chris Bryson of New School Foods (https://lnkd.in/djA_rKCf): Chris previously started a software company called Unata back in 2011 which was an eCommerce platform for grocery chains to sell their groceries online and run their digital customer experiences. After having grown that startup to 100 employees and profitability, the company was acquired by Instacart. Chris says: ‘I originally just thought I’d sell my company, create a nest egg, and maybe do passion projects for the rest of my life.’ But then he learnt about factory farming, and he felt it was one of the biggest problems that not enough people were tackling. So he got involved as angel investor in alt protein companies: ‘In 2018-2020, everyone was chasing the bandwagon, Chris notes and continues: ‘And everyone was encouraging the “fail fast, iterate quickly” mindset. But strategies that work in software don’t work in food. If you serve me shitty food, I will not give you a second chance.’ Chris felt the plant-based meat industry was lacking in R&D spend and overly dependent on a tiny tool kit — including extrusion, which he believed wouldn’t be sufficient to create the next generation of alternatives. So he put out a call for proposals, ; one of the projects developed a novel food structuring method using directional freezing. Chris and the team patented the innovation, and established New School Foods in 2021.  The company develops whole-cut plant-based seafood including a highly realistic plant based filet of salmon with the same texture, taste, nutrition and cooking experience. ‘Our product looks like raw meat, but also cooks and transforms like regular meat. This is important, because behavior change becomes easier if the customer doesn’t feel like they’re giving something up’, Chris explains.  The salmon product is made from e.g. agar (extracted from algae), potato protein (‘for the nice brown/orange color’), and algal oil, and contains the same levels of omega-3 and iron as a conventional salmon. New School aims to eventually use its technology for B2B partnerships to enable whole-cuts for other brands - in seafood or beyond. ‘When you bring the product to a chef, they feel it’s magic. They never thought plants could do this. When you create an experience that delights people, it makes things easier. Creating a “wow” experience is so important in this industry’, Chris observes. New School, which today has a team of 25 people, has moved into a pilot facility and hopes to launch pretty soon. The company has raised about $15M so far, about half of which has been non-dilutive funding. New School Foods is eager to meet chefs in the U.S. and Canada (but also Europe) interested in trying out the product. Chris is always interested in chatting with investors, and Chris also wants to speak to B2B companies looking for plant-based whole cuts.

Some highlights from FoodTech Weekly #203 (https://lnkd.in/djA_rKCf) sent this morning: 🇩🇰 🐄 Denmark has decided — as the first country to do so — to introduce a tax on carbon emissions from agriculture to meet its climate goals, starting at DKK 300 (appr. €40) per ton emitted in 2030, rising to DKK 750 (appr. €100) by 2035 onwards 💰🇸🇬 Cellivate Technologies of Singapore, which develops solutions related to cultivated meat, may receive up to $3.3M in funding after having won Channel News Asia’s business reality show, The Big Spark 💰🇦🇷 Argentinian AgTech company Kilimo has bagged $7.5M in fresh Series A funding, in a round led by Emerald Technology Ventures and backed by e.g. The Yield Lab LATAM and Kamay Ventures. In short, the company helps e.g. farmers reduce the use of irrigation water in their fields 💰🇦🇷 Mercado Diferente ≠ of Brazil has secured $1.6M in pre-Series A funding led by Collaborative Fund, and joined by Caravela Capital. The company provides a subscription service for discount organic items that don’t meet aesthetic standards but are perfectly healthy 🤖🇰🇷 Korean automotive company Hyundai’s Robotic Lab has revealed a new robot called DAL-e that will deliver food and bev inside office complexes. The new robot is said to have a 99.9% accuracy rate 🤝🇨🇭 Swiss vertical farming companies YASAI  and GreenStage AG have announcedthey will merge (h/t FoodHack). Meanwhile, Swedish industry peer Grönska Stadsodling has filed for bankruptcy 💰🇦🇺 AgTech focused VC fund Tenacious Ventures has done a first close for its Fund II, with A$18M (appr. $12M) raised 💰🌱 Bezos Earth Fund will launch a new Center for Sustainable Protein at Imperial College London, with $30M in funding, to help transform global food systems 💰🇸🇪 Swedish land-based aquaculture company BIGakwa has reeled in SEK 6M (appr. $0.6M) in funding — a mix of debt, equity, and grants. The company is proceeding with its plans to build a facility with an annual capacity of 6,000 tons of fish 💰🇿🇦 Precision fermentation startup Immobazyme of South Africa has nabbed $1.3M in funding from the University Technology Fund and Innovus (University of Stellenbosch Enterprises). 💰🇺🇸 Nave Analytics, Inc. of Nebraska, U.S. has harvested a $400K round from e.g. Invest Nebraska, and Husker Venture Fund. The company provides tools for ag producers to make data-driven decisions about water use, e.g. by understanding the soil water content in a specific field 🍦 📉 Israeli FoodTech startup Better Juice has expanded its sugar-reduction technology to lower the sugar loads in fruit sorbets by 50-70%, and calories by 40% 💡Conversation with Chris Bryson of New School Foods 🤩 New jobs at Food System Innovations (U.S./remote) and Foreverland Food (Italy) ...and much more! Subscribe now at: https://lnkd.in/d8mUXXH5 #foodtechweekly #FoodTech #agtech #startups #funding #tech #innovation

Excerpt from last week's FoodTech Weekly conversation Mikkel Precht of Alcolase ApS (https://lnkd.in/darik-Py): Mikkel's background is in molecular biomedicine; he did his BSc and MSc at Copenhagen University on this topic. ‘Mikkel started discussing with some university friends how to use their bioscience knowledge to do something important and solve something big’, Mikkel recalls, and adds: ‘Alcohol intolerande impacts a lot of people, mainly in East Asia — hundreds of millions of people in places like Japan, Korea, and China’. Alcohol intolerance happens in a gene called ALDH2, making it impossible for the body to break down the alcohol, so the body will experience symptoms like nausea, flushing, and asthma attacks. Alcolase has developed a product which helps people with alcohol intolerance; it's inspired by how the human body breaks down alcohol. ‘Our product, which will come as a form of small hydrogel or shot that you drink, goes into the stomach, where it will break down the alcohol there before it even gets to your bloodstream. That way, you can drink an alcoholic beer and experience it as if it’s a low alcohol or no alcohol beer. It’s similar to how lactose intolerant people take a lactase pill, Mikkel explains. The company’s goal is that when a consumer takes one dose of Alcolase, this will allow that person to drink moderately — maybe 1-2 glasses of wine — and avoid the side effects like getting drunk or other symptoms. Alcolase has found a way to protect its magic enzyme so that it stays active and stable in the stomach; Mikkel believes they are the first in the world to be doing what they’re doing (and they’re patenting it). ‘We hope we’ll be part of changing the focus of drinking a glass of wine from the alcohol, to the taste. Humanity has spent thousands of years refining e.g. beer and wine. We want to allow people to enjoy e.g. wine for the taste and experience, not to get drunk. We hope to reduce the amount of alcohol-related diseases, and also to empower people with alcohol intolerance to feel more included’, Mikkel says. Alcolase hopes to be on the market with its product in late 2026, starting in South Korea. Then other markets will follow, likely China, Japan, the U.S. and eventually the EU. ‘We think that if every person with alcohol intolerance uses Alcolase every other time they go out for a drink, that represents a $100B market’, Mikkel states. The company, which has 4 co-founders, a researcher, and 4 interns in the lab and on the business side, is looking to hire a CCO and another full-time researcher. Alcolase is currently raising a €1.5M round, and is looking for a lead investor with expertise in synbio, biotech, and/or FoodTech to lead the round. The company is also eager to connect with founders within functional foods and synbio FoodTech — to learn best practice on how to bring a product to market. Mikkel can be reached via LinkedIn.

Some highlights from FoodTech Weekly #202 (https://lnkd.in/darik-Py) sent yesterday: 💰🇬🇧 U.K. plant-based meat startup THIS™ has banked £20M (appr. $25M) in Series C funding, led by Planet First Partners 💰🇮🇱 Israeli cultivated meat company Ever After Foods has secured $10M in funding from U.S. and EU strategic investors, as well as from Tnuva Group of Israel. Ever After claims it has developed a bioreactor platform that can produce cultivated foods with ‘unmatched’ cost-efficient scalability 💰🇺🇸 Tender Food of Somerville, Massachusetts (and formerly doing business as Boston Meats) has scored $11M in Series A funding for its plant-based meats. The company uses a fiber-spinning process similar to making cotton candy to turn plant protein into structured cuts of meat, such as steak, chicken breast, and seafood. The A round was led by Rhapsody Venture Partners and joined by e.g. Lowercarbon Capital and Safar Partners 💰🇦🇺 Farmbot Monitoring Solutions of Sydney, Australia has bagged $4.6M in new funding, from e.g. Telstra and Macdoch Ventures. The company has developed an IoT platform that e.g. monitors water and gives farmers the ability to control their infrastructure remotely 🥒🇳🇱 Netherlands company Vahl brothers (Gebroeders Vahl) has installed the world’s first robot sorting and packing line for cucumbers; the system records the shape, thickness, length, and weight of each cucumber, and 7 robots then sort the cucumbers into the right crates. The sorting line can do 20k cucumbers per hour or 140k per day at full capacity — and the number of people needed for sorting and packing has fallen from 15 to just 6 🐛🇭🇺 Agroloop of Hungary has built a Black Soldier Fly production facility outside Budapest, which will turn insects into animal feed. The company has raised €20M (about $21M) in funding so far 💰🇮🇱 Israeli microalgae producer Brevel has secured an almost NIS 1.5M (appr. $0.4M) grant from Israel Innovation Authority רשות החדשנות. The company can produce proteins and functional lipids from microalgae 💰🇺🇸 Collaborative Fund of New York has raised $125M to invest in early-stage climate, health, and food ☀️🇸🇪 Swedish indoor vertical farming company Ljusgårda ABårda has entered a power purchase agreement (PPA) with e.g. Svea Solar, re. 8 GWh per year from a 13 hectare agrivoltatics park (a solar park in ag fields that produce rapeseed, ley, and wheat). This will more than cover Ljusgårda’s annual energy needs 🐷🇺🇸 Antibiotics are still being used by some farmers to fatten up pigs in the U.S., even though the practice has been banned since 2017 💡Conversation with Mikkel Precht of Alcolase ApS 🤩 New jobs at Planet A Foods (Germany), Volta Greentech (Sweden), Fermify (Austria), and Koa Switzerland & Ghana (Germany) ...and much more! Subscribe now at: https://lnkd.in/d8mUXXH5 #foodtechweekly #FoodTech #agtech #startups #funding #tech #innovation