Startups
Bram van Beek
Bram van Beek
At the closing of the 9th F&A Next summit, Jord BioScience was crowned winner of the Feike Sijbesma Sustainable Innovation Award 2024, which includes a €25,000 grant prize. This prestigious award recognizes Jord BioScience’s innovative microbial technologies enhancing crop productivity. According to the jury, the company stood out for its potential significant impact in the agri-food […]
Great news from F&A Next Ecosystem Partner Invest-NL and Innovation Partner Oost NL, that have joined Pymwymic’s Healthy Food Systems Impact Fund II. to support changemakers who are transforming the food system for a better world, from farm to fork. The total investment of €20M, which also includes backing from Invest International, brings the fund […]
OneThird, a Dutch FoodTech company created to address the annual loss of one-third of all food produced due to spoilage has raised €2.75M in a late-seed funding round, increasing the total amount of funding raised to date to €5.75M. The funding was raised through connections made at F&A Next. The late seed funding was led […]
All over the world, ambitious founders of startups aim to shape a healthy and sustainable food system with their novel technologies. This year, F&A Next has selected 10 of the world's most promising startups in Food & Agtech to pitch live on stage. Their solutions, which address new sources of proteins, valorize sidestreams, support healthy diets and more, exemplify the creativity and ingenuity that has global investors eager to place their bets on the agrifoodtech sector at large. Here’s a sneak peek at who they are.
How do we feed the world within the limits of our planetary boundaries? This is the daunting challenge the food & agriculture industry is facing: reducing greenhouse gas emissions and food waste, limiting freshwater consumption and soil depletion to restore biodiversity, our ecosystems and livelihood. At F&A Next 2023, the interplay between sustainable production and consumption is highlighted, and explored what it takes to make the agrifood industry nature-positive for a net-zero future.
At F&A Next, Anterra Capital announced the closing of its second Global Food and Agriculture Technology Fund at $260 million. The new fund was oversubscribed thanks to robust institutional demand. According to Anterra. the pandemic and food price inflation has fueled investor interest to accelerate transformation of the Food and Ag sector.
All over the world, ambitious founders of startups aim to shape a healthy and sustainable food system with their novel technologies. This year, F&A Next has selected 12 of Europe's most promising startups in Food & Agtech to pitch live on stage. Their solutions, which address new sources of proteins, valorize sidestreams, support healthy diets and more, exemplify the creativity and ingenuity that has global investors eager to place their bets on the agrifoodtech sector at large. Here’s a sneak peek at who they are.
F&A Next has warmly welcomed The Innovation Diplomacy Program (IDP) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Brazil as event partner of F&A Next 2022. Ahead of the summit they will introduce the latest trends and opportunities of Brazil’s booming agtech and foodtech innovation ecosystem with the Radar Agtech 2020-2021 report, the first extensive mapping of Brazil’s innovation ecosystem in agriculture, livestock and food technology.
Wageningen is increasingly focusing on entrepreneurship to bring about innovation in agrifood and come up with inspiring ideas for climate-resilient and sustainable food systems. To stimulate young (student) entrepreneurs to develop their ideas, several entrepreneurship grants have been established in recent years through the University Fund Wageningen. At F&A Next, you will hear all about two awards: the AtlasInvest Entrepreneurship Grant and the Feike Sijbesma Sustainable Innovation Award.
Need a place to stay? Book a room at the Wageningen International Conference Center in Wageningen. Benefit from the many business facilities of this four-star conference center with special F&A Next tariffs. Enjoy the comfort of walking up to your room after F&A Next drinks and conference dinner on Wednesday and shuttle service.
In 2018, the early-stage Agtech startups Root and AppHarvest joined the F&A Next summit. It was here that the founders, Josh Lessing and Jonathan, first met. It was a great match. After a period of working closely together, AppHarvest acquired Root in 2021 for $60M. Now Josh and Jonathan are scaling their joint business into a global Agtech powerhouse.
F&A Next 2022 is on its way! It's been a while since we met in person with hundreds of the world's brightest agrifoodtech startups, investors and corporates. We look forward to welcoming you again at Wageningen Campus, or online. The choice is yours.
Anterra Capital, co-founder of F&A Next, announced the initial closing of its second agrifoodtech fund, Anterra F&A Ventures II, at $175 million. Due to the positive market reception for the fund’s mission and strategy, Anterra is tracking towards an upsized second fund, and anticipates a final closing in the third quarter, 2021.
Wageningen University & Research and impact investor Pymwymic are to collaborate in the domain of sustainable food systems. The partnership aims to support innovative ideas and technologies. This cooperation forms the cornerstone of Pymwymic’s Healthy Food Systems Impact Fund II, which is currently being launched and working with WUR to source and analyze potential launching investments.
Foodvalley NL, ScaleUpNation and InvestNL have joined forces to launch a new ‘Fastlane programme’ for innovative protein pioneers. For this programme they are now looking for ambitious entrepreneurs, based in the Netherlands, who have an innovation in the field of the protein transition, want to scale-up and need to raise 10 million euros or more in the next one to three years. Are you this pioneer? Apply now!
ICL is a global specialty minerals and chemical company that is committed to advancing humanity for a sustainable future. F&A Next reached out to Hadar Sutovsky, VP External Innovation and General Manager of ICL Planet at ICL and panelist in the “Convergence of Food, Ag and Tech” discussion, for some insights on how they include startups in their quest to use new technologies in building a sustainable food system.
Changing our food system for the better is a challenge in and of itself for any startup in any year. But definitely more so in a year of a pandemic causing many enduring lock-downs. Last year we presented eight promising agrifoodtech startups at F&A Next. Where do they stand now? We spoke to six of them. And, oh boy, they had quite some stories to tell!
The Livekindly Collective, a collection of heritage brands and startups, announced a successful capital raise of $335 million. This brings the total funds raised in its first year to a staggering $535 million, making it one of the top three highest-funded and fastest-growing plant-based food companies. The funding will help accelerate Livekindly's expansion into global markets and fuel its acquisitions, key partnerships and investments in plant-based innovation. On 26 May, Kees Kruythoff, CEO of Livekindly Collective, shares his thoughts on where we are heading with plant-based food at F&A Next.
F&A Next invites investors, entrepreneurs and experts to address the next challenges of our sector on Wednesday, 26 May 2021 at the 6th annual F&A Next Summit. Aside from offering you the opportunity to virtually meet and greet with all participants, we look forward to showcasing the next scaling food and agtech companies and moderating interesting debates between our distinguished panelist.
F&A Next, Europe’s first and foremost platform for tech startups, scale-ups, investors and corporates in food & agriculture to boost disruptive innovations, is open to applications from startups that want pitch at the F&A Next 2021 summit in May and be titled ‘Next Hero in FoodTech & Agtech’. Startups can apply until 14 April.
On 9 December, StartLife, co-founder of F&A Next, celebrates its 10-year jubilee. The Dutch agrifoodtech accelerator welcomes the entire F&A community to join its online anniversary, which includes the presentation of nine startups that will then complete StartLife's acceleration program.
Today Anterra Capital and StartLife, both co-founders of F&A Next, announced that they have formally entered into an investor partnership. Together they will back entrepreneurs who are building a healthier and sustainable food system. The partnership is an expansion of years of fruitful collaboration.
Dutch Health Ingredients company Nutrileads has announced the closing of a Series B financing round of €6.5 million. The funding is provided by Icos Capital together with Goeie-Grutten and existing shareholders DSM Venturing, Oost NL, Shift Invest and Thuja. Nutrileads will use the capital to launch its the immune-enhancing ingredient Xtramune and to progress its portfolio of health ingredients.
Enko Chem, a startup employing AI and machine learning to help farmers sustainably protect their crops from pests and disease publicly launched after securing $45 million in a Series B round of financing, bringing its total funding raised to date to $66 million. Led by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the latest round attracted a strong mix of existing (Anterra Capital and Rabobank) and new investors (Finistere Ventures, Novalis LifeSciences, Germin8 Ventures, TO Ventures Food).
With great pleasure StartLife, one of the co-founders of F&A Next, invites you to the graduation of nine ambitious Food- & AgTech startups of the StartLife Accelerate Spring 2020 Cohort, which takes place online on Wednesday, June 24th 2020 from 15.30 to 18.00 (Central European Summer Time). For the first time StartLife opens the doors to their graduation day to the global F&A community.
F&A Next, in cooperation with Foodbytes! by Rabobank, proudly presents the eight most promising startups that have been selected as this year’s ‘Next Heroes in Food- & AgTech’. Next May 13, four FoodTech and four AgTech startups will pitch their innovations during a (free) live webinar of F&A Next to an international audience of agrifood investors, corporates, media and fellow entrepreneurs.
Innovative Food- and AgTech startups from all over the world are invited to apply for showcasing themselves at the fifth edition of F&A Next on May 13-14, 2020 in Wageningen (the Netherlands). In total 16 most promising Food- & AgTech startups will be selected to pitch their innovations on stage. F&A Next attracts an international audience of about 600 startups, investors, leading corporates and media. It includes one and a half day of networking, pitching and debating the future in food and agriculture.
