One week in a post #50: Creveable vs Ozempic, M&As, Cultivated Meat, Overcrowded Space.
One week in a post #50: Creveable vs Ozempic, M&As, Cultivated Meat, Overcrowded Space.
Food and climate highlights on my radar!
Baby Matilde was born 6 weeks ago and I’m now back at writing. Woooo!
🥩 I’m Almost Getting Bored of Talking about Cultivated Meat
Aleph Farms got approval to sell cultivated steaks in Israel in mid January. This is huge, mainly because it adds a third country on the map, after Singapore and the US.
The USDA made some statements about the importance of cellular ag, although those statements are (in my opinion) still very generic.
Europe is more and more cautious. Austria, France, and Italy received support from 9 delegations for an initiative aimed to evaluate and initiate a public debate regarding the impact of cultivated meat, as they see the technology as a potential threat to the economy, public health, and farmers.
🧠 Josh Tetrick
I really enjoyed reading the interview Larissa did to Josh. Josh is a pioneer, and one of the few who is still the CEO of his companies after a decade. The snippets of good advice for the space I’m getting from the piece are the following:
After a decade where not being profitable was kind of ok, now it’s not. This is a good incentive for a company like Just, but definitely creates troubles for younger ones who are not ready for scale yet.
The space is overcrowded (lots of companies doing similar things), folks are going to make mistakes and fail: it’s normal and it’ll be a learning opportunity for all.
Act short-term: don’t build anything beyond a pilot plant. Think long-term: the objective is to maximize what you’re trying to do over the course of a lifetime plus.
Never be under the impression that what is true in the lab is necessarily true at large scale. This is why vertical farms are going under and cultivated meat is sold at only two restaurants in the United States.
Versioning: Just Eggs (they own 99% of the plant-based eggs market) is at its 5.14.4 version. And they keep comparing with conventional eggs.
You have to be obsessed with costs. His theme for 2024 is “no burn.”
💊 Creveable vs Ozempic
I really care about the “creveability topic”: I don’t believe sustainability benefits being enough to get to massive market adoption, and craveability is often a key way in to consumers (I wrote a piece for the WEF on this topic last year). But, the NYT’s recent article very interestingly takes this conversation a step further: is craveability still a relevant selling point in the Ozempic era? I do think so — but it has to be proven.
[Three raises]
😝 Flavors / Israeli Mediterranean Food Lab raised a $17 million series A round to scale up novel solid state fermentation technology to create flavor ingredients.
🍄 Mushrooms / Infinite Roots (ex Mushlabs) Raises $58M (series B) in “Europe’s Largest Investment in Mycelium”
🐮 M&As / v2food has acquired ready meal brands Soulara and MACROS to broaden its distribution reach beyond in-person channels. AND MPearlRock (an investing vehicle between Kroger’s, PearlRock Partners, MidOcean Partners) acquired Nutpods.
[Three products]
🍫 Taste the Future Chocolate Snack Bar / vegan chocolate, hazelnut and berry snack bar with 2% Solein powder (just launched in Singapore)
🍫 Lindt HELLO / first vegan Lindt HELLO chocolate bar with ChoViva: no cocoa beans, yes oats and sunflower seeds.
🍺 Kerza Beer by Patagonia — Kerza is a perennial that thanks to its 12-foot-deep root system, retains soil, water and nutrients.