Food tech, from burgers to insects
3-in-1: 3 digital news in 1 minute. On Monday. Episode 238
Discover 3 original digital news, invest one minute and be a better professional!
News 1: Plenty — salads in flashy packaging
Plenty is a vertical farming company — build-up like a start-up with high fundings of $540m. A very good performance for a company founded in 2014. They grow lettuce, arugula and baby kale — all very modern salad forms. No pesticide, less water, local. Opinion for B2B: Success of Plenty lies in manufacturing and products, but also in the packaging. A flashy pack that reminds of fast-food packs. And key to the success are the backers: SoftBank Vision Fund (2/3 of the fundings in 2020), and presumably Jeff Bezos and Eric Schmidt.
Great discovery, Plenty. And great marketing.
News 2: Impossible Food, higher money, lower prices
The most famous meat-free burger producer, Impossible Food; kept on raising money in 2020 ($700m). Impossible Food concentrates on taste, quality and production, with high-demand. An important step though: lower price for the burgers — lowering the difference to real meat. Opinion for B2B: Impossible Foods just published their yearly impact report — an exercise that companies increasingly do. Impossible founder has always been very committed to sustainability and impact of cattle growing on planet. Still business goes on with new supermarket chain, Kroger — a giant.
We wait for Impossible patties in Europe! (They are great, when fried cross) concentration comes.
News 3: Leader in insect farming, Ynsect
Ynsect is the leader in insect farming (mealworms) to produce proteins for livestock, pet food and fertilisers. It gathered $400m and is building large industrial capacities in the North of France. A 40 meter high factory will open in 2022 that will produce 100.000 tonnes of powder and oil. Opinion for B2B: A very interesting and transparent production chain — the worm and insect breeding is piled up (hence the height of the factory). This is a new industry, we’ll see the first results of the immense fundings in 2021 with a high production phase in the first factory.
Well, we won’t eat insect — not directly but indirectly. A progress as far as sustainability is concerned.
Author is the research team (10 trend scouters) at specialist Space and Lemon (Hamburg, Berlin) — scouting in main tech geographies, in AI development, virtual worlds and e-commerce. Excerpts of research are gathered here in original weekly news since 2016, always with a professional opinion — no re-write of TechCrunch. Research time: January 2021.
Come back next Monday and share your opinion.
