👎 🌾 Oups, the deal is over. Aerofarms is getting away from its SPAC deal (an explanation about such deals here).
🧟 We knew about urban farms on rooftops, inside supermarkets, but we now we have a new company, GreenForges trying to make them underground (15 to 30 meters deep). The idea may not be as crazy as it sounds: indoor farms consumes a lot of energy to maintain a constant level of temperature to adapt to external conditions. Deep in the ground, the climate is much more stable and hence the cost of digging could be compensated.
🍕 Real Good Foods files for a $86M IPO. The company markets grain-free and keto (low carb, high protein) frozen meals. The company sold for 35.5M in the first half of 2021, almost as much as the whole of 2020. However, the losses are also piling up. The company lost $10.3M in the first six months of this year and $15.6M last year.
We are quite curious to see how the market will “receive” this new money-loosing food (non-tech) company.
💰 The best deals of the week are about meals not cooked at home:
- A new unicorn: Swile, a French startup, raised $200M for its easy-to-use meal voucher card.
- ResQ raised $39M for its platform, enabling more than 4,000 restaurants to connect with contractors and manage repairs and maintenance.
- Culture Biosciences raised $80M for its bioreactors-as-a-service business. The startup designs and operates its bioreactors that are rented to other companies before they scale their capabilities. As we explained here, investments in infrastructure (and bioreactors will be a key infrastructure element of the future of protein) are rising fast.
- French startup Phenix, a leader in the fight against food waste in Europe is acquiring a smaller competitor in Italy, MyFoody. This is interesting news as it shows that a path for internationalisation for European companies is possible (until now, most food B2B companies have a hard time in to expand in Europe and have instead chosen to get acquired).
