This week, craft beer company Bira landed new funding to expand its geographic reach while Torr FoodTech grabbed $12 million for its unusual and tech-centric approach to snack bars. In agtech, Clarifruit also raised $12 million while more layoffs struck the food delivery sector.
Foodtech funding
🇮🇳 Craft beer maker Bira 91 lands $70 million round led by beer company Kirin. Bira will use the funding to build more breweries and expand geographical reach of the Bira line of beverages. (Deal Street Asia)
🇬🇧 Sustainable grocery startup Modern Milkman raises £50 million ($60 million) after Series C close. Insight Partners and ETF Partners and Praetura Ventures are among the company’s backers. (UKTN)
🇮🇱 Torr FoodTech lands $12 million for snack bars made with ultrasonic energy. The startup’s technology eliminates the need for sugary binders to weld ingredients together. (Food Navigator)
🇬🇧 Bright Biotech lands $3.2 million seed round to commercialize cultivated meat growth factors. FoodLabs led the round, which also included Big Idea Ventures, FoodHack and others. (Tech.eu)
🇳🇿 Opo Bio emerges from stealth with $1.5 million seed round. The startup is developing cell lines for the cultivated meat industry from New Zealand livestock. (Protein Report)
🇺🇸 Prado, an e-commerce platform for local food, raises $5.75 million seed round. Bonfire Ventures led the round, which Prado will use to scale its platform and support more merchant partners. (PR Newswire)
🇬🇧 SynBioVen leads £1 million ($1.2 million) seed round for Eden Bio. The latter uses machine learning to increase protein yield and will expand its platform thanks to the raise. (Protein Report)
�?��?��?��?��?��?��?� Seaweed producer New Wave Foods raises “six-figure sum�? from shareholders. Funding will go towards increasing production and expanding the company’s SHORE range of seaweed-based products. (Vegconomist)
🇺🇸 San Francisco’s BioFluff closes $500,000 pre-seed round for plant-based fur. SOSV/IndieBio fund, Joyance Partners and Ataraxia Partners Limited participated, among others. (Green Queen)
Agtech funding
🇮🇱 Clarifruit raises $12 million Series A led by Champel Capital and Firstime Ventures. Funds will help the startup scale sales for its automated quality control platform for produce. (FinSMEs)
🇬🇧 Robotic pest control startup BigSis closes over-subscribed £4.5 million ($5.4 million). Regenerate Ventures led the Series A round. (AgReads)
M&A, IPOs & partnerships
🇳🇱 Delivery service Eat Just Takeaway sells 33% stake in Brazil’s iFood to Prosus for €1.5 billion ($1.5 billion). Eat Just Takeaway is under pressure from investors to “consolidate loss-making operations.�? (Silicon Canals)
Other news
🇺🇸 Quick-grocery startup JOKR shuts down operations in Santiago, Chile and Medellin, Colombia. The service let go of 22 employees and 19 employees, respectively, in those markets. (TechCrunch)
🇨🇠Nestlé’s Nespresso will debut paper-based compostable capsules. The new capsules will launch as a pilot in 2023 in France and Switzerland before heading to other geographies. (FoodDive)
🇫🇮 Food delivery platform Wolt launches tech hubs in Israel and Sweden. The company will hire dozens of experts across software engineering, product management and design and data. (Tech.eu)
🇮🇳 Zomato lays off 3% of its workforce. The food delivery giant cited “regular performance evaluations�? as the reason for the layoffs. (Tech in Asia)
🇵🇹 Burger King Portugal opens fully vegan restaurant. The pop-up location, which follows similar restaurants in the UK, will serve vegan takes on BK classics like the Whopper and Big King. (Vegan Food and Living)
�? Governments around the world sign off on the “Koronivia joint work on agriculture�? package at COP27. The International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems called the deal “disappointing�? for leaving out smallholders. (AFN)
🇺🇸 Nuro axes 20% of its staff. The autonomous delivery company laid off about 300 employees to preserve cash, admitting it had over-hired in 2021. (The Robot Report)
🇺🇸 Research firm How Good launches measurement SaaS platform for scope 3 emissions. The platform analyzes more than 33,000 ingredients and can help companies evaluate the carbon in their supply chains. (Food Dive)
🇸🇬 Cultivated meat startup Meatable to invest $60 million to establish a hybrid meat innovation center. Meatable is working with plant-based meat startup Love Handle on the venture. (OneGreenPlanet)
