Tag: UK

EXCLUSIVE: Lemna cultivator DryGro closes $4.7m Series A to sustainably replace soy in livestock feed

May 7, 2020

Duckweed is rich in protein and grows incredibly fast. It can double in biomass every two days.

BRIEF: Welsh hydroponics startup Phytoponics raises fresh round of £500k

April 30, 2020

The Welsh controlled environment farming company Phytoponics designs, develops, and supplies Deep Water Culture systems for large scale hydroponic crop production.

Arise, robotic slug slayers

April 27, 2020

Slugs are greedy guests on farms. Some estimates reckon a single slug is capable of killing up to fifty wheat seeds within one week of sowing. A group of UK innovators and farmers are working on a robotic solution.

Meal kits at a time of corona: does this crisis deliver an opportunity?

April 16, 2020

Gousto, a UK meal kit company, is seizing the moment either way; it has tapped its investors for an additional £33 million ($41 million) in a funding round led by Perwyn, BGF, MMC Ventures and the influencer and fitness guru Joe Wicks.

Crowdfunding for restaurant tech at a time of Covid-19: An Edinburgh success story

March 19, 2020

A digital hospitality management point of sale system managed to close an oversubscribed investment round despite the global backdrop perhaps bolstered by its food delivery-related offering as other startups offer other means to avoid human interaction in the restaurant space.

What do Walt Disney, Chuck Berry and Mark Twain have in common?

March 10, 2020

Agri-TechE’s Belinda Clarke and colleagues went on a trade mission to St Louis, Missouri in the US to discover how it’s built an ecosystem for agritech innovation and investment. Here are her takeaways.

Growing cannabis legally in the UK is hard, but far from impossible

February 27, 2020

BDS Analytics has forecast that the worldwide legal cannabis industry generated revenues in the region of £11.5 billion in 2019 and is expected to grow to around £35 billion by 2024. Alongside this phenomenal rate of growth, the UK agriculture sector is embarking upon a period of unprecedented change.

Wisdom (and wallets) of the crowd: Small Robot Company closes crowdfunding campaign at £2.1m

February 13, 2020

The VC firm 7percent Ventures is confirmed as lead investor, having plowed in £200,000. By the time of close, a total of 1,759 investors had backed the round.

One future of pest control: Grow and release swarms of sterile male insects

February 5, 2020

UK-based BigSIS has closed a pre-seed round of funding, AFN can reveal.

Meet the FoodTech 500’s top 10 startups powering the food revolution

February 4, 2020

The top startup companies that made the 2019 FoodTech 500 list represent every sector of the FoodTech ecosystem, from farm to fork, and they are all success stories in their own right, which is why we are so proud to share them with you.

Zap! This UK startup just raised €6.5m to commit electricide on weeds

January 22, 2020

RootWave owes its electrical spark of inspiration to years of earlier efforts from the CEO’s father who had been trying out ways to electrify weeds in the 1980s

From whisky barrels to microalgae-based pet foods: MiAlgae raises £1m

January 20, 2020

The biotech business uses co-products from the whisky distillation process to produce microalgae, which are high in omega3 and other nutrients.

From stem cells to pork belly: New Age Meats’ full stack approach to cultivated meat

January 13, 2020

New Age Meats just raised $2.7m in seed funding to broaden its product offerings from sausages into bacon and pork belly.

This plant-based meat startup called This has just raised £4.7m in seed funding

January 9, 2020

This reporter visited This at their tech hub offices by Portobello Road in London last May to try its plant-based bacon alternative ahead of the launch that summer.

UK aeroponics startup LettUs Grow raises £2.35m seed round

January 9, 2020

Early-stage life science and engineering investors Longwall Venture Partners led the round, which marks its inaugural agri-food tech investment.

Happy McVeganuary: McDonald’s to offer first fully vegan meal in UK in Q1 2020

December 11, 2019

In the UK, the practice of Veganuary — being vegan for the month of January — is starting to catch the attention of the fast-food giants.

Exploiting Intellectual Property rights in the UK’s food and drink sector

December 11, 2019

This article is intended to demystify IP in the food and drink industry and shed light on the full extent of the opportunities available to companies to protect and benefit from their IP, with a particular focus on the role patent protection can play.