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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Ag Tech

Vertical Farmer Plenty Announces $1B Financing Deal With REIT Reality Income

Vertical farming company Plenty has entered into a strategic alliance with REIT Realty Income to fund Plenty’s vertical farm development. Under the agreement, Realty Income will acquire and provide development funding for properties that will house Plenty’s indoor farms, which will be leased to Plenty under long-term net leases. The agreement provides for up to $1 billion of development opportunities.

As the initial transaction of the alliance, Realty Income will acquire the land and provide development funding for the first farm of Plenty’s indoor vertical farm campus near Richmond, Virginia, which was announced last year. Plenty expects the future multi-farm campus to deliver more than 20 million pounds of produce across multiple crops annually. The first farm to be developed on the campus will grow strawberries with Plenty partner Driscoll’s and initially serve the Northeast market.

If this sale and leaseback type of transaction sounds familiar, perhaps it’s because you read yesterday about a similar kind of deal being used to fund sidewalk delivery robot startup Kiwibot. However, unlike the food robotics market, sale & leaseback transactions are pretty common with real estate assets. Farmers have been using these types of arrangements for decades, so it’s not all that surprising to see REITS start to take an interest in more tech-forward farming players like Plenty.

It’s also not surprising for a capital-hungry vertical farming business like Plenty to look to this type of financing to fund its growth. AppHarvest and Kalera entered into sale and leaseback deals last year after running into financial troubles and largely exhausting access to more traditional growth capital in the venture market. Plenty has already raised a massive $914 million in funding as of last year and had started to run into financial difficulties early this year, announcing they would close their San Francisco facility.

Now, with its new funding facility through Reality, the company has access to a large – but fundamentally more risky – pool of growth capital.

CES Session: The Future of Farming (Video & Transcript)

The first session we will feature is titled ‘The Future of Farming’, a panel which featured experts on gene-edited crops, molecular farming, and vertical farming.

The session description:

The numerous challenges facing today’s farmers require them to be ever-more-efficient to survive. In this session, we’ll look at how farmers are employing automation, IoT, biotech and more to create the farms of the future.

The panelists for this session included:

  • Vonnie Estes, VP of Innovation, International Fresh Produce Association (Moderator)

  • Haven Baker, Co-Founder, Chief Business Officer at Pairwise

  • Amit Dhingra, CSO | Professor and Department Head, Moolec Science | Texas A&M University

  • Katie Seawell, Chief Commercial Officer, Bowery Farming

This content is available to Spoon Plus subscribers. If you would like to subscribe to Spoon Plus, you can do so here.

Google’s Farm Tech Moonshot Mineral Becomes Alphabet Company

Google parent company Alphabet has added a new company to its portfolio this week in Mineral, a farm tech startup that spent the last five years incubating within Google’s X.

The news of Mineral’s graduation to full-fledged Alphabet company came in the form a blog post by Mineral CEO Elliott Grant (previously of Shopwell, a shopping startup sold to Innit). According to Grant, the mission behind Mineral is to “help scale sustainable agriculture”, which they are doing by “developing a platform and tools that help gather, organize, and understand never-before known or understood information about the plant world – and make it useful and actionable.”

According to Mineral, they have analyzed over 10% of the total farmland on Earth, modeled more than 200 plant traits, phenotyped 17 crop varieties, and developed more than 80 high-performance ML models. Mineral’s ag-optimized analysis tools will be used to process large unstructured sets of the world’s agricultural data, sourced from satellite images, farm equipment, public databases, and Mineral’s own proprietary data streams. The company will make this data available to partners to combine this data with their private data to derive insights into yield, genomic understanding, and agronomic discovery.

One such partner is Driscoll’s. The large berry company has been working with Mineral to explore ways to improve data collection in its breeding operations and work on better yield forecasting. The two also worked together to enhance berry inspection using Mineral’s perception tools and, according to Driscoll’s, was able to build a system that many believe performed similarly to human experts.

Another Mineral project Mineral was the creation of a special crop-roving robot named Don Roverto. Don Roverto was used by Mineral to assist the Alliance for Biodiversity and CIAT to accelerate their work to understand and uncover hidden crop traits within the world’s largest bean collection. Using Don Roverto, the Alliance, after thirty years of searching, found a “magic” bean with intrinsic drought-resistant characteristics.

Google has often used X to incubate mission-based startups, and Mineral is no different. According to Grant, they chose ag as a vertical because it is “increasingly believed to be a major contributor to the climate crisis — but it is also a victim of a changing climate. There is no time to waste to find more climate-resilient crop varieties, to transition to less chemical- and fossil fuel-intensive practices, to improve soil health, and to restore biodiversity.”

Israel’s Wasteless Uses A.I. As A Solution for Food Waste

The aptly named Wasteless is a triple threat as it offers a solution that simultaneously benefits retailers, consumers, and the environment. The Israeli company provides an AI-driven solution to cut down on food waste in retail by allowing supermarkets to give consumers dynamic pricing based on the freshness of a given product.

Wasteless has reached a milestone in announcing a partnership with Hoogvliet, a leading European supermarket chain with over 70 stores across The Netherlands. Using Wasteless’ dynamic pricing technology, the retailer will reduce food waste by optimizing costly price markdowns. This partnership forms part of a wider store rollout to stop throwing viable perishable goods into the dumpster, increasing margins while benefiting shoppers and the planet.

“The E.U.’s supermarkets alone are responsible for nearly 7% of all food waste, leading to more than 15 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions,” Oded Omer, Co-Founder, and CEO of Wasteless, said in a company press release. “By the time this waste occurs, all the energy and resources have already gone into the food. It’s the costliest waste we’re creating – indeed, it costs each store up to 4% of its revenues. In addition, Wasteless will help customers make smarter grocery decisions. Our solution also helps retail managers by optimizing inventory control systems. Joining forces with leading innovative retailers like Hoogvliet means we’re another step closer to saving the environment and achieving our goal of reducing food waste in retail by 80% while increasing retailers’ profits. This is a concrete step toward the Food Waste Pledge we signed at the COP27 Climate Conference and other signatories, including the World Wildlife Fund.”

Speaking to the origins of the company, Omer told The Spoon, “I stood in the supermarket, and I said to myself, well, it doesn’t make sense that I’m going to pay the same price for Chobani for that expires in two days and six days,” he recalled. “So, I started to contact some the academic professors and so on, and to understand the perspective of revenue management.”

That revelation in 2016 led to Wasteless, a machine-learning system embedded in a retailer’s data center. It can be applied using electronic shelf markers (which are more common in the E.U. than in the U.S.) or stickers applied to anything from meat and poultry to apples and salad greens. The pricing scheme is done in small increments using sell-by and consumer shopping data. Wasteless’ pricing can also be applied using a consumer-facing application.

To date, Wasteless is backed by $9.75M in funding, led by Slingshot Ventures (N.L.), Zora Ventures (U.S.), SOSV (U.S.) IT-Farm (Japan), Food Angels (Germany), strategic industry-related investors, and Israel Innovation Authority grants.

In 2021, Wasteless announced a collaboration with NX-Food, a German food tech hub, to bring its pricing systems into stores from METRO, one of the world’s leading wholesale specialists. Omer summed up the win-win bottom line for implementing dynamic pricing. “It’s a huge win for us as we grow and show the world what our technology is capable of. Most importantly, this is a huge win for the environment. There’s a lot of talk about sustainability in business, but it only really works if it’s also profitable.”

Israel’s Brevel and Vgarden Team Up to Add Taste to the Alt.Cheese Market

Vegans would agree that cheese is one of the more difficult foods to put aside when entering the plant-based world. A decade ago, vegan cheese options were lacking, and even though the choices have skyrocketed, finding a smoked gouda cheddar. Mozzarella, or provolone’s taste closely approximates its dairy counterpart, has been challenging. Yes, some smaller artisan brands do a respectable job, but finding a creamy, melty vegan cheese that nails taste and texture is a tall order.

Israel-based Brevel is teaming up with plant-based food manufacturer Vgarden to tackle the cheese challenge head-on. In a press release ballyhooing the new partnership, the companies believe the combination of Brevel’s algae-based microprotein and Vgarden’s production exercise will yield a top-notch product.

In an interview with The Spoon, Eyal  Adut, Chief of Marketing and Business Development at Vgarden, and Yonatan Golan, Co-founder and CEO at Brevel, discussed how the two companies would change the face of non-dairy cheese.

What protein is Vgarden using now, and how will Brevel’s algae-based alternative change the product?

Adut: Currently, Vgarden’s meat and fish alternatives contain high levels of pea or wheat protein. The challenge with these widely used plant-based proteins is in mild-tasting products such as cheese when a certain aftertaste is notable in these products when using those proteins. This fact, combined with Vgarden’s cheeses being allergens free (our products do not contain nuts, oats, soy, etc..), creates the situation that most of our plant-based cheeses are high in calcium, fiber and other nutrients yet contain no protein.   We   have   successfully developed cheddar and parmesan cheese with 10% pea protein, which was possible due to the relatively strong flavor of these cheeses

Vgarden intends that all of our cheeses will contain plant-based proteins, and that is why Brevel’s protein,  being taste and color neutral,   can provide us with the required solution for mild-tasting cheeses.

Golan: In terms of functionality – Brevel tries to be as inert as possible – increasing the protein of Vgarden’s cheeses without changing taste, color, or texture. Brevel has been described as a “ghost protein” – it increases protein content without noticing it is there

Will Brevel’s product be used for more than cheese, given Vgarden’s product line?

Adut: Vgarden is constantly researching novel ingredients and will continue to use other plant-based proteins for its meat and fish alternatives, as these serve different purposes, such as texture. The main challenges for novel ingredients in the plant-based industry remain taste, cost, and scale. As more consumers demand solutions for highly nutritious products, we are working with the industry to scale up novel ingredients. Vgarden’s goal is to provide healthy plant-based foods at price parity with the   animal-based   alternative, and   that   is   what   will   drive gardens ingredients choices in the future

Any chance of moving into the B2C space?

Adut: Vgarden has been active in the Israeli B2C space for nearly a decade under the Mahu Mashu™   brand, and its products are being sold in most retail stores in Australia under other brands (powered by Vgarden). Vgarden recently announced its joint venture with Cale  &   Daughters and established garden Australia, which will manufacture locally-made products for retail and food service in Australia. We are aiming to occupy any white spaces in the worldwide market with the right partners on board

What specific cheeses will Vgarden make? More of its hard cheeses and soft cheeses?   Are there certain cheeses better suited for Brevel’s protein?

Adut: That is something Vgarden is exploring and researching. The Brevel protein shows promising qualities, and we hope to incorporate it in all of our cheeses. Vgarden has developed prototypes of mozzarella and cheddar with previous versions of Brevel’s protein, which taste groups received very well.

How will you enter the U.S. market? Any chance for direct-to-consumer?

Adut: Vgarden recently announced it had formed a presence in the U.S.; Vgarden carried out thorough research of the plant-based market in the U.S. and developed its penetration strategy.   Vgarden is   currently under negotiations with some of the leading sales and distribution companies in the U.S. food sector to be able to provide for any future and current demand for Vgarden’s plant-based offerings

Monarch Launches Production of Electric, Driver-Optional Tractor

Monarch, a California-based maker of autonomous electric tractors, announced it had launched production of its first model, the MK-V. The first models of the MK-V, a driver-optional, all-electric tractor, will be going to Constellation Brands, a large wine and spirits producer. According to Monarch, the first six MK-Vs off the production line are heading to Constellation.

MK-V Tractor Launch Video - "The Future of Farming" | Monarch Tractor

The MK-V reaches the production stage after four years of development. Monarch rolled outs its alpha-model tractor in 2019 and the beta model in 2020. After creating a pilot model and testing it at various farms around the US over the past year, the company will begin shipping the MK-V by the middle of next year. A 2023 MK-V will cost $68 thousand minus tax, extras, and a subscription service.

Each MK-V uses six NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX chips to power its AI. The NVIDIA Jetson AI platform enables the tractor to operate in a field with only machine vision in situations where GPS is not available. Each MK-V has two 3D cameras and six normal cameras, and the machine can run models for multiple farming tasks when paired with different implements.

The operator can run a fleet of Monarchs using interactive automation features, including Shadow mode, where a Monarch follows a worker on the job. The MK-V can act as a tractor or utility vehicle as well as a generator in the field.

While the MK-V is still early in a nascent autonomous tractor market, Monarch is far from alone. John Deere and Yanmar are also building autonomous tractors, while Ztractor has been shipping its electric-powered Bearcub24 since 2019. Others, like the Netherlands’ Agxeed, have three Agbot models.

But with the MK-V, Monarch looks to have the first driver-optional electric tractor. The timing is good, as the MK-V comes at a time when the overall robot-powered ag market is heating up. According to Statista, the total automated tractor market is expected to reach $2.3 billion.

Figure: Global Revenue Forecast, Autonomous Tractors (US$M). Source: Statista

While the future looks bright for autonomous farming, that doesn’t mean most large farmers will embrace robotic fleets immediately. Instead, the integration will happen slowly over time, first with mixed fleets, as farmers adapt processes around seeding, weeding, and harvesting to utilize automation. Building skills for automated farming will also take time, which makes the idea of having a driver-optional tractor like the MK-V attractive.

Perhaps the most significant barrier to robotic farming is cost. The $68 thousand price tag of the MK-V is 2-3 times that of a conventional driver-only gas-powered tractor, so bringing on new tractors will require significant capital outlays for farmers, many of which operate on lean margins.

High Tech Farmer AppHarvest is Rapidly Running Out of Money

Kentucky-based controlled environmental agriculture company AppHarvest has warned in its latest financial report that it only has enough capital to continue operations into the first quarter of 2023.

According to its quarterly report filed on November 7th, the company says there is “substantial doubt” about its ability to continue as a going concern unless it can raise additional outside capital.

As of September 30, 2022, we had $36.2 million of cash on hand, and an accumulated deficit of $270.6 million. In October 2022, we entered into a $30.0 million note and loan agreement with Mastronardi Produce-USA, Inc. (“Mastronardi USA”) and received $15.0 million upon execution. In November 2022, we initiated a third restructuring plan to further reduce operating costs and our losses. Despite these actions, management believes there is substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern and absent additional sources of financing, we expect that our existing cash and cash equivalents will only allow us to continue our planned operations into the first quarter of 2023

According to a story in the Kentucky Herald-Leader, the company needs $85 to $95 million in cash to fund operations for the next 12 months. That’s a lot of new capital in a market where raising new money has become increasingly difficult.

AppHarvest is looking at a few strategic options, including selling Berea farm to its primary distribution partner  Mastronardi Produce Limited (the same company it borrowed funding from to launch the first 5 acres this past month). They are also talking with potential acquirers according to AppHarvest CEO Jonathan Webb.

“There are large conglomerates in auto manufacturing,” Webb told the Lexington Herald Leader. “I mean, look at GM, for example, and all the different auto brands inside of GM. So yeah, we’re actively having conversations with CEOs, with investors, with partners, with anyone who wants to partner with us here in Kentucky and to help make our mission succeed.”

The company’s current situation is a far cry from its early days when it was seen as one of the brightest lights of the CEA farming world. And while the company’s massive capital needs show a potential downside of building automated indoor farms – especially compared with more traditional farms that take significantly less capital to build and run – it’s worth pointing out other high-tech indoor farmers like AeroFarms and Bowery are continuing to thrive and find new partners.

As we wrote a couple weeks ago, the company’s new farm in Berea is impressive to watch in action and will no doubt produce a whole bunch of salad kits once the full 15 acres is operational. Let’s just hope the company can survive long enough to see it come to fruition.

Re-Nuble Aims to Use Food Waste To Make Indoor Agriculture More Sustainable

The role of indoor growing, ranging from small indoor vertical farms to large greenhouses, is vital to sustaining the world’s food supply. Controlled Environmental Agriculture is essential for growing crops in underused spaces, rooftops, and rows of vertical gardens. Seizing upon this vital resource, Tinia Pina, Founder & CEO of ReNuble, has taken up the challenge to help this idea scale. With a best-in-class nutrient and growing medium, Pina’s company has created organic compounds sourced from food waste for sterile, technology-driven hydroponic and soilless systems.

For the dynamic Pina, her vision for what became Re-Nuble started more than six years ago in the New York school system. “I also saw our outreach educational classes for this program were from 8 a.m. until 3 p.m.,” she recalled in an interview with The Spoon. “I noticed what the kids were bringing for class for lunch, and those options were very processed. With that diet, you see a direct impact on their level of attention. And I felt, from a systemic perspective, that will immediately impact the type of productivity and retention of the information we’re teaching. So overall, I always felt that people with better access to nutrition are spending more time being able to be fully immersed and retaining the information. And they are calling less out of work with fewer sick days.”

The genesis of Re-Nuble’s solution, Pina goes on to explain, came from her observation of how food waste was disposed of. “At that time, New York was spending $77 million to export its food waste to China, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. And that’s simply because we don’t have the composting infrastructure to handle it,” Pina said.” I wondered how we could make food waste a consistent alternative for conventional synthetic fertilizers by doing it for soils or hydroponic systems. So, we focused on using food waste as a viable alternative for chemical fertilizers in indoor grow environments.”

Specific to its product lines, Re-Nuble’s Head of Business Development & Strategy, Riyana Razalee, said in a company press release, “CEA is a large part of the future of farming, and so, we have to prioritize its role in decarbonization. Solutions need to address the gamut of the food supply chain, decarbonizing as many parts of it as possible. This vital issue is what our team is focused on”. The company states that for every acre of an indoor farm that uses Re-Nuble’s organic hydroponic nutrient, Away We Grow, the company can remove up to 5 metric tons of carbon emissions annually. That’s approximately one home’s energy use for a year.

In addition, its grow medium, ReNu Terra, supports the anti-peat movement. Companies, activists, and governments are demanding the reduction of drained peatlands. When farmed for agriculture needs, peat changes from a carbon sink to a greenhouse gas emitter, releasing approximately 1.9 gigatonnes of CO2e annually. This amounts to 0.4 billion gasoline-powered passenger vehicles driven for a year.

Pina said Re-Nuble has three customer segments now. First is the consumer market. Away We Grow could be part of a kit offered for an indoor growing system. “Consumers are eager to find more environmentally and people and animal-friendly solutions,” Re-Nuble’s CEO noted. The second segment is commercial farms such as Gotham Greens. The third, she said, is “disruptive farms.” For the last group, she stated, “There are severe supply shortages globally, and so there’s a lot of urgencies to find something that could be more sustainable, but even more importantly, something that they can afford.”

Watch as AppHarvest’s Automated Indoor Farm Takes Produce From Pre-Seed to Packaging

Even if you’re aware of controlled environment agriculture, a tech-forward approach to indoor farming that can include techniques such as hydroponics, aquaponics, vertical farming, automation, and more, chances are you haven’t seen a CEA system take a plant from seed to packaging.

Well, today’s your lucky day because we have a video from AppHarvest showing the different stages, from seeding to harvesting to putting it all in a package. The new 4-minute-plus video is a simple b-roll that came to us from AppHarvest as part of the news announcement about their new indoor salad greens farm in Berea, Kentucky.

According to the announcement, the new farm features a touchless growing system that automates the entire lifecycle from pre-seeding to packaging and also includes onsite washing for produce that goes into washed-and-ready-to-eat salad packs. AppHarvest says the new farm can grow about 35 million lettuce plants at a time, going from seed to maturity in about three to four weeks, depending on the variety. That equates to about half a billion lettuce plants produced per year.

AppHarvest built the new facility in partnership with Mastronardi Produce, a company that sells produce such as tomatoes, berries, and salad kits at retail, who provided $30 million in debt financing to AppHarvest to build out the new facility.

You can watch the entire video below or skip to certain portions on Youtube, including harvesting, washing, or packaging.

Watch a completely automated precision farm from seeding to harvesting to packaging.

According to AppHarvest, 5 acres of the new farm is currently operational, and shipping produce. They plan for the new facility to be a total of 15 acres when completed. The company plans to open a 30-acre berry farm in Somerset Kentucky in the next few weeks, a farm which they built using $50 million in USDA-secured debt.

While the new facilities may pump out a whole bunch of produce compared to traditional outdoor acreage, the total number of CEA farms is just a drop in the bucket when compared to the 900 thousand traditional-ag acres there are in the US. According to AppHarvest, the US only has about 6 thousand CEA farm acres, compared with over half a million in Europe.

Doing Avocado-Eaters a Solid the World Over, Apeel Introduces Avocado Freshness Scanning System

Today Apeel announced they would unveil new freshness detection technology for avocados this week at the Fresh Produce Association Global Produce & Floral Show.

The system, based on hyperspectral imaging technology, starts by shining a light that penetrates several millimeters below the skin. From there, it utilizes a sensor to measure how much light is reflected in the visible and near-infrared spectrum. Once scanned, the system’s AI predicts the avocado’s freshness and estimates shelf life by utilizing a “global avocado ripeness model” the company developed using machine learning based on “data on tens of thousands of avocados throughout multiple seasons, blooms, and countries of origin.”

The system, which is the evolution of the technology inherited by Apeel when it acquired Impact Vision last year, will be used in both a commercial implementation targeted at grocery retailers and distributors as well as in a scanner useable consumers to check freshness in the produce aisle.

The commercial-grade technology will feature a scanner and an “AI data model for imaging hardware in produce sorters” at packing houses and distribution centers. According to the announcement, the new scanner will detect freshness five times more quickly than traditional methods such as penetrometers (which poke holes in the produce to detect freshness). In addition, the new software will enable more accurate sorting, enabling distributors to target the proper retail channels based on the remaining shelf life.

While all that sounds great and represents a potentially significant advancement that could significantly reduce food waste, I can’t help but be a little more excited for the consumer retail scanner. If you’re like me, no fruit (yes, it’s a fruit) is more frustrating than the avocado; deliciously sublime when perfectly ripe, but hard as a rock if eaten too early and resembling the decaying flesh of a zombie if you’re just a couple of days too late. If this technology works, my days of throwing avocados into the compost bin may soon be coming to an end.

For Apeel, the new product line represents the first significant new product outside of the food tech unicorn’s flagship life-extension technology. According to the company, the technology will initially be limited to avocadoes, but they indicated they are working on extending it to other produce such as limes, mangos, and mandarins.

Impact Justice Launches Program to Train Incarcerated Populations to Become High-Tech Farmers

This week, Impact Justice announced the launch of Growing Justice, a new program that utilizes precision indoor agriculture to expand access to fresh food in prison communities and provide skills training to incarcerated and formerly incarcerated populations.

The program’s first containerized vertical farm and job training program will be at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, the first of what Impact Justice says will be multiple Growing Justice installations at corrections facilities across California. The second location will be Impact Justice’s Oakland headquarters. Both installations will be hydroponic farms built inside shipping containers outfitted with grow lights and irrigation systems.

The Growing Justice work training program is available to populations within 24 months of their scheduled release date. Those already released can apply to participate in the program. Growing Justice is also working with controlled environment agriculture advisory firm Agritecture to create a six-month training program tailored to give prison populations hands-on experience operating a vertical farm.

The organization is also working with a number of vertical farming startups to create pathways for employment post-training, including Square Roots, Bowery Farming, and Fork Farms.

“People in prison face substantial challenges, including poor and limited food choices. For those released, employment options are limited and healthy food remains difficult to obtain,” says Impact Justice President Alex Busansky. “Growing Justice demonstrates how government, the nonprofit sector, and businesses can work together to improve the quality of food, create pathways to jobs, and give people a real second chance.”

In addition to job training, Growing Justice also provides fresh food to prison populations. According to Impact Justice, a fully operational containerized farm will provide up to 60 pounds of leafy greens and herbs per week. Only 11% of prison populations have regular access to fresh vegetables, and this low access often leads to lingering health problems for prison populations that can often extend well-beyond incarceration.

Growing Justice is the latest program in the vertical farming space launched to help train a new generation of farmers. Kentucky-based Appharvest has been building training centers at schools in low-income areas of Appalachia to give high-school students skills training in vertical farming, while Freight Farms works with schools around the Northeast to launch containerized farms at high schools.

The program by Impact Justice is unique, however, in its focus on bringing rehabilitative programming to incarcerated and formerly incarcerated populations. Initially funded by the California State Legislature, the California Department of Corrections, and an anonymous donor, the program provides a potential pathway for people of color to start businesses and find employment post-incarceration.

The program is a tangible example of how newer approaches to food production can be made as on-ramps for marginalized populations to enter the job market. What makes Growing Justice pretty neat is it’s also a very tech-forward and sustainability-centered approach to farming, a part of the economy where people of color own a tiny percentage of businesses.

Construction of the containerized farm at the Central California Women’s Facility will begin in early 2023, and the organization expects to recruit its first cohort in June next year.

Vienna’s LIVIN Farms Receives €6 million to Upcycle Food Waste Into Insect-Powered Protein

Turning food waste into a usable commodity might seem like magic, but it’s a reality for companies such as Vienna-based LIVIN farms. The company has announced a €6 million Series A round led by venture Investor Peter Luerssen, allowing it to expand its team and solution.

As a player in the alternative protein space, LIVIN Farms developed HIVE PRO, a modular system for fully automated insect processing. HIVE PRO allows waste management companies and large-scale food producers to upcycle organic waste and by-products into valuable proteins, fats, and fertilizers.

In an interview with The Spoon, Katharina Unger, Founder of LIVIN Farms, explained her company’s process. “Livin Farms customers are largely food and feed processing companies and agricultural players that have access to at least several thousand tons of organic by-products every year. They typically make a loss on it by having disposal costs. Generally used feed substrates include by-products, surplus production from the bakery, potato, vegetable, and fruit processing industry, and pre-consumer wastes from retail and grain by-products.”

One of the critical elements of the LIVIN Farms solution is the use of black soldier fly larvae in its “plug-and-play” solution. A module is set up at a customer site, after which, as Unger says, her company operates it as a Farming as a Service (FaaS) model. The first step is when the organic waste of the customer is recycled on-site by being processed and prepared as feed for the insects. After that is completed, using a robotic handling machine moves the feed made from the organic food waste into pallet-sized trays. The machine then inserts seedlings (baby larvae) and empties the harvest-ready larvae from the trays.

At this point, insect Larvae are fed on recycled organic food waste in a climate-controlled environment. The insects are then ready to be harvested within seven days only. The final step is processing the insect larvae into protein powder and oils. The end product is three animal feed types high in protein, antibacterial, and antiviral properties.

LIVIN Farms LIVIN farms recently opened a fully up-and-running 1,400 square meter pilot site in Vienna where the HIVE PRO is demonstrated to interested customers.

Unger began her journey to building LIVIN Farms in 2013, she said. “The idea for Livin farms started when I developed the first device to grow the entire lifecycle of the black soldier fly larvae in a kitchen device to turn kitchen scraps into proteins ready to harvest. This prototype was patented and then turned into a tabletop farm for mealworms (The Hive) later on that was sold in the hundreds to more than 45 countries worldwide. Since 2019, Livin Farms has used our years of R&D to focus on industrial insect farming technologies.”

The company is working on projects throughout Europe, Unger said. LIVIN Farms hopes to have several installations over the next several years.

LIVIN Farms has previously secured a Seed investment round, grants, and subsidies from the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG), Austrian Promotional Bank (AWS), and the European Innovation Council (EIC) under the European “Green Deal,” totaling more than $4 million €. The company believes its latest investment will lead to the “further growth of the company and will be used for expanding the LIVIN farms team, standardization of the technical solutions, and driving the initial scale-up phase.”