Impossible Foods’ lawyers did not violate rules of professional conduct by hiring private investigators to pose as potential customers in order to obtain product information and samples from Motif FoodWorks as the companies clashed over IP, a court has ruled.
Fungi-fueled alt meat startup Meati Foods has laid off 17 of its 300 employees this week, three months after opening a new production facility in Thornton, Colorado, but says the move does not reflect weak demand for its products.
Motif FoodWorks has accused Impossible Foods of hiring private investigators to pose as potential customers to “covertly” obtain information about Motif’s business that could influence ongoing litigation between the warring foodtech companies and “circumvent the discovery process.”
Beyond Meat CEO Ethan Brown says he is confident of returning to growth and achieving cashflow positive status in the second half of this year, after posting a 17.7% decline in net revenues to $195.5m in the first quarter of 2023.
Agrifoodtech investment in Europe fell 46% to $5.1bn in 2022, consistent with a 44% drop in global funding. But there were some bright spots…
Precision fermentation startup The EVERY Co has teamed up with Alpha Foods to explore the potential of meat alternatives featuring ‘animal-free’ egg whites made with microbes instead of chickens.
Armed with $15m in seed funding from Fall line capital, the MIT E14 fund, and FootPrint Coalition, Israeli startup Chunk Foods is building a factory for its plant-based whole cuts of meat.
From ‘designer fats’ made by microbes to oleogels, the race is on to find replacements for animal fats in meat alternatives, say the founders of California-based startup Lypid.
US retail sales of plant-based foods rose 6.6% to $8bn in 2022, with growth in creamers, eggs, and butter partially offset by declines in meat, ice cream, and cheese, according to new reports from the Plant Based Foods Association (PBFA) and the Good Food Institute (GFI). Unit sales fell 3%.
“Meat alternatives have to win on taste, price and health,” says the CEO of fungi-fueled Australian startup Fable Food. “And we think mushrooms are the best route to do it.”
In part two of our whistlestop tour of foodtech at Expo West, we look at startups from Brightseed, which is exploring new bioactives for gut health, to Epogee, which has found intriguing new applications for EPG: a plant-based oil restructured in such a way that virtually none of it is absorbed by the body.
As news about Silicon Valley Bank rippled through the exhibition halls at Expo West on Friday, AFN walked the show floor to catch up with key players in foodtech, from Climax Foods, showcasing the next generation of plant-based cheese, to Eat Just, which is taking “critical steps towards profitability.”
Swedish startup Millow is developing minimally processed products made from oats and mycelium grown in a patent-pending fermentation process it claims uses a fraction of the water and energy used by players such as Quorn.
