EIT Food is providing direct funding of up to €500,000 per venture to three new investments in high performing agrifood startups as part of the EIT Food Startup Impact Fund.
EIT Food is supported by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), a body of the European Union.
The funding opportunity is open to all EU agrifood startups that are alumni or currently participating in one of EIT Food’s flagship entrepreneurship programmes: Seedbed Incubator, EIT Food Accelerator Network or RisingFoodStars.
The three startups EIT Food will invest in are:
Madeleine Gielens, founder of MaGie Creations, said partnering with EIT Food accelerates the speed with which his startup can bring its beer-grain-based food ingredients to market.
“It allows us to take the next steps in research and development, factory design and commercialisation, speeding up the market adoption of upcycled foods,” Gielens said.
Benedicte O’Sullivan, COO of Fyteko, said Fyteko is “honoured” to receive the support of EIT food, adding: “As an EIT Food community member we are very much looking forward to receiving support in scaling our operations, connecting with industry partners or further investment opportunities.”
Max Gulde, CEO of ConstellR, said: “With our vision fixed firmly on future food security and agrifood system optimisation via ‘beyond-visual’ data, this partnership with EIT Food helps bring our critical data infrastructure and crop monitoring products and services ever closer to the market and to leveraging global impact. The stellar network of EIT Food and its investment helps us grow our product and agronomy teams and bring precise, granular and actionable crop health insights to the hands of growers across the planet.”
Benoit Buntinx, director of Business Creation at EIT Food, said the EIT Food’s Startup Impact Fund acts as a “bridge” for high-performing agrifood startups to “transition from a regional to a European and global investment scope, increasing their visibility to attract interest from other investors”.
He added: “We are grateful to our wider investor community, including our core partner FoodSparks (by PeakBridge), which plays a vital role in opening up further investment opportunities for these companies. EIT Food continues to search for high-impact startups with an outstanding definition of their value proposition and proprietary technologies that can increase the sustainability, health and integrity of our food value chain.”
Source: foodanddrinktechnology.com