European growth investors Pymwymic and StartLife have joined forces to offer assistance to high-potential start-ups in the agri-food tech space, beginning at the pre-revenue phase. The project aims to smoothen the transition between each vital stage in early business development. 

Given today’s COVID-19 climate, the partnership flags that emergent solutions aiding industry’s sustainable food system transition continue to face critical shortages in start-up investment.  

“Access to labs and pilot facilities has become more difficult for start-ups as a direct result of COVID-19 protection measures all over Europe,” Bram van Beek, marketing and communication manager at StartLife, tells FoodIngredientsFirst.

Lengthy R&D-to-market processes are one of the disadvantages that start-ups face when compared to FMCG giants. Further delays in product launches are anticipated due to pandemic headwinds.

“Early-stage start-ups are struggling more than normal to find launching customers, as firms are less eager to currently invest more than required. Raising capital has also become more of a challenge as the number of start-ups seeking funding has risen due to COVID-19.”

Involvement at an early stage
Pymwymic typically only partakes when a start-up passes an annual turnover of €500,000 (US$606,000). Through this partnership with StartLife, the impact investor becomes involved in a much earlier stage, explains Rogier Pieterse, managing director at Pymwymic.

“We know how strategic decisions in an early-stage can impact later stage developments. Through early involvement, we can help start-ups to better line up for growth and follow-up funding,” he remarks.

“By doing so, we want to help start-ups reach their full potential faster. When it comes to follow-up funding, it clearly helps when we already have developed a good relationship with a start-up.”

An example of an agri-food scale-up that Pymwymic has funded is Ceradis, a spin-off out of Wageningen University & Research (WUR), in the Netherlands. With a reduced rate of chemicals use, Ceradis aims to facilitate the transition to more environmentally-friendly agriculture. 

Another example is InspiraFarm, which enables food waste reduction and access to high-value markets by supplying cold storage and post-harvest processing equipment.

Cohort of more than 300 start-ups
Since 2010, StartLife has supported more than 300 agri-food start-ups along the farm-to- fork value chain. 

Examples of successful start-ups that StartLife has supported include Nutrileads, a health ingredients company that identifies and develops crop-derived food ingredients with a clinically-proven positive impact on human health.

Hudson River Biotechnology also joins the cohort as an agricultural biotech company that develops enabling technologies for molecular plant breeding. It is mainly focused on CRISPR technology, which is applied to optimizing crops.

Other high potential start-ups include Orbisk, which has developed the world’s first automated food waste monitor based on AI technology. It is currently one of six finalists in the Postcode Lottery Green Challenge 2020.

StartLife has also supported the development of Fulfoods, which has created and trademarked a sustainable ingredient through a proprietary biorefinery of microalgae, which requires no arable land for production and is more efficient in capturing CO2 than trees.

“With StartLife predominantly supporting pre-revenue start-ups and Pymwymic backing early-growth start-ups to scale up further, our partnership is an excellent symbiose that paves the road for growth of much-desired systemic innovation in the agri-food industry,” says Lin Zhu, investor relations manager of StartLife.

New healthy food system fund
The partnership of Pymwymic and StartLife is part of a larger collaboration agreement with WUR, one of the co-founders of the agri-food tech accelerator. 

In the third quarter of this year, Pymwymic expects to launch a new fund called Healthy Food System Impact Fund, a venture capital fund that invests in early to growth stage companies that are transforming the food system through innovative and disruptive technologies.

The new fund will be based on the sustainable food system approach model designed by WUR.

Start-up culture weathers pandemic
PepsiCo has recently announced the ten global finalists joining its fifth annual Greenhouse Accelerator. This year’s mentor-guided program supports a host of “market-ready” health and wellness products including encapsulated functional foods, metabolically personalized dietary advice and a hangover-alleviating probiotic drink.

In other recent developments, DuPont Nutrition & Biosciences is joining forces with an elite host of disruptive start-ups to develop a new breed of future food. These include emergent technologies in biotechnology, personalized nutrition, food safety, functional ingredients, sustainability and market analytics.

To further stimulate pandemic recovery in Europe, EIT Food has provided more than €10 million (US$11.8 million) in direct financial support across its business creation programs in 2020. Successful EIT Food start-ups have more than €91 million (US$107 million) in external investments.