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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

seaweed

LIVEKINDLY Collective Acquires Seaweed Burger Maker, The Dutch Weed Burger

LIVEKINDLY Collective, a collection of alternative protein brands, announced this week that it is acquiring Amsterdam-based company The Dutch Weed Burger. The Dutch Weed Burger makes a range of meat analogs using seaweed as the hero ingredient. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

LIVEKINDLY Collective formed in March of 2020 when Foods United bought vegan-focused media company LIVEKINDLY. Brands in the LIVEKINDLY Collective portfolio include Oumph!, The Fry Family Food Co., LikeMeat, and No Meat, which the company acquired earlier this year. This past March, LIVEKINDLY Collective closed a $335 million round of funding that the company said would go towards new partnerships and acquisitions.

With the purchase of The Dutch Weed Burger, LIVEKINDLY Collectiveis expanding into seaweed products. Seaweed is a source of protein that can be cultivated using minimal fresh water and no agricultural land. It’s also pretty versatile. Other startups using seaweed include New Wave Foods, which is making seaweed-based shrimp, and Oceanium is using seaweed to make food ingredients including protein, fibre and nutraceuticals, as well as home-compostable packaging materials.

In its press announcement, LIVEKINDLY Collective said that the acquisition of The Dutch Weed Burger also will help the company scale internationally into the UK and the Nordics, as well as the U.S. and Canada.

LIVEKINDLY Collective is striking while the plant-based iron is hot. Here in the U.S., sales of plant based meat have experienced double-digit growth over the past two years. According to the Good Food Institute, the plant-based meat market is worth $1.4 billion here in the U.S., having increased by more than $430 million from 2019 to 2020. Additionally, the NPD Group reported this week that shipments of plant-based proteins to restaurants in the U.S. were up 60 percent year-over-year.

Between demand for plant-based foods increasing and its sizeable warchest, it’s a safe bet that this isn’t the last acquisition LIVEKINDLY Collective will be making this year.

Oceanium Raises £2M to Turn Seaweed into Food and Packaging

UK-based seaweed processing startup Oceanium announced today the first close of a Seed II Round of funding worth approximately £2 million ($2.7M USD). The round was led by Green Angel Syndicate with World Wildlife Fund. This round of funding follows a previous undisclosed investment from venture capital firms Katapult Ocean and Sky Ocean Ventures, as well as Scottish Enterprise.

Oceanium refines sustainably grown seaweed to produce a number of products that range from home-compostable packaging materials to food ingredients including protein, fibre and nutraceuticals. These products are still under development and will be sold under the brand names Ocean Actives, Ocean Health, and Ocean Ware. The first line of Ocean Active nutraceuticals is projected to launch in Q4 of this year.

Oceanium is among a host of startups repurposing seaweed into new foods and materials. Loliware makes plastic-like straws out of seaweed. New Wave Foods makes a plant-based shrimp out of ingredients including seaweed. And AKUA makes a plant-based jerky out of seaweed.

It’s not hard to understand why seaweed is suddenly a hot ingredient for eco-conscious startups. According to Oceanium’s website, using seaweed as a base ingredient for its products has a number of environmental benefits including absorption of CO2 from the air and Nitrogren from the sea, as well as seabed protection and zero need for land or fresh water to grow.

Oceanium says that it will use the new funds to scale its biorefinery and processing model to “open up the market” for sustainable seaweed farming.