On 22nd June 2022, we hosted our last Meetup before the summer in our Barcelona Food & FoodTech Innovation Hub, in partnership with Talent Garden, on the topic “How AgriFoodTech can contribute to build a more efficient Food Supply Chain“. We brought together a mix of FoodTech startups, investors and experts to deep dive on the topic and absolutely enjoyed sharing, learning, and enabling meaningful connections among like-minded people fighting to make our Food System more sustainable.

Check out a few pictures of the event here

 

The challenges of our Food Supply Chain

Globalization and technology allows us to access almost any type of food at any given time. This comes at a hidden cost: consumers are becoming more and more disconnected from their food, while the Food System as we know is becoming inefficient and unsustainable.

Among many other issues, the below is only a snapshot of a few challenges that our food supply chain is currently facing, while additional ones are rising with the current global geopolitical and economic context.

 

With this in mind, we invited some of the most exciting Spanish AgriFoodTech startups using technology to make our food supply chain more efficient and sustainable, from vertical farming, to biotechnology, software solutions, and upcycling of agricultural waste.

 

The event

After a brief introduction from the moderator Max Leveau, COO & Co-Founder of Forward Fooding, each AgriFoodTech company presented their technology and were asked to share some insights on the positive impact they are generating.

The presentations were followed by a fireside chat with Anna Sues Caula, Responsible Purchaser of Raw Materials at Damm, and our partner in the Barcelona FoodTech Innovation Hub.

AgriFoodTech Local Champions

Here is more information about the speakers and key quotes from their presentations:

• Xfarm – Lorenzo Ramondo, Sales Consultant Iberia
  Lorenzo is a Production Engineer with a focus on food. He works as a Sales Consultant in xFarm Technologies Iberia.
  Xfarm provides software and hardware solutions for farmers throughout the agrifood supply chain.

“On one hand, we help producers be more efficient and productive with their land. Thanks to our software and hardware, we obtain key metrics to measure everything that happens in the field. We also provide another benefit in which producers can sell carbon credits. This generates an extra income for them.”

• Agrosingularity – Paloma Iturmendi Küstner, CMO
  Paloma has spent 20 years in the ingredients industry for food, non-food and biotech companies. She has successfully launched products through business strategies based on understanding the competitive environment, leveraging the channel ecosystem and recognizing consumer needs.
  Agrosingularity provides circular ingredients for clean label solutions.

“At Agrosingularity, we value byproducts and return them back to the value chain. We give a second life to vegetables that were going to be wasted. Upcycling allows the transformation of raw materials from agriculture into new ingredients and natural additives.”

• InstaGreen – Anneke Stolk, Co-Founder, product and business development
  Anneke Stolk is partner and co-founder of Instagreen, an urban farming startup, where she now focuses on product, service and business development. Prior to founding InstaGreen, she worked for 5 years at an innovation consultancy in Barcelona, where she was responsible for the international management and coordination of open innovation collaborations in food, life sciences and design based innovation.
  InstaGreen started 8 years ago in Barcelona as a local indoor farm, the first of its kind in Spain. After years of research and development in hydroponics and controlled environment agriculture, the company created its own cultivation systems and growing methods for microgreens and larger edible plants. In the hydroponic farm, plants are grown with only a little water and without the chemicals often used in traditional agriculture. In the past years, InstaGreen grew to be a go-to place for many entrepreneurs who start or scale up their local farms.

“Our mission is to let everyone know that there is another way to grow, and education is a fundamental pillar. We educate people to produce vegetables through urban farming. Generally, we have a process where we help individuals to understand the market. Then we explain how to get the balance and optimization of production and sustainability.”

• Phenix Spain – Casimir de Dalmau, COO
  Casimir has a degree in Business Administration from the University of Barcelona. After 7 years in consulting, he joined Phenix and contributed to launching the startup in Spain.
  Phenix offers a wide range of services in order to repurpose end-of-life products. Its position as a key industry player, its network of partners and its collaborative web platform allow it to reliably link supply and demand for surplus products in real time.

“We have a double mission at Phenix: to educate distributors and consumers. To educate consumers, we do a lot of communication campaigns about new ways of cooking, environmental education, the importance of local products and the use of food. For distributors, it is more economically oriented, throwing food away not only affects the planet but also brings economic waste.”

• Groots – Alejandro Rueda Gómez, Head of Finances & Strategy
  Alejandro has a background in sustainability and finance in the public and private sector.
  Groots changes the rules of the game by cultivating plants with an innovative hydroponic vertical system.

“We all have to get involved in this food chain problem. We need to use less land, less water and be equally or more productive. That’s why at Groots, we created a solution based on vertical farming up instead of out. We developed a growing technology to optimize the use of space and maximize the quality of the plants.”

 

Fireside chat with Anna Sues Caula, Responsible Purchaser Raw Materials at Damm Group

Anna Sues Caula is the Responsible Purchaser of Raw Materials, Auxiliaries and By-products for all the business units of the Damm Group. She has a Master’s Degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Barcelona and Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, and a Doctoral degree from the Eindhoven University of Technology, specializing in Green Process Engineering. For the past 11 years, she has been working with farmers and suppliers to build a more local and sustainable supply chain of cereals. She is part of the team that has been involved in the Traceability Project, from “Ground to Glass”. 

The Catalan company, founded in 1876, leader in the beverage sector, manufactures beer, soft drinks and bottled mineral water. They have a majority presence in the catering sector and you can find them in 130+ countries. Their flagship product, Damm Estrella Galicia beer, is currently one of the best-selling beers in Spain.

”One of our principles is to promote local production. The producers who work with us are located at a maximum of 200km from our processing plant. We work as a team with a group of farmers, which we seek to enhance day by day by educating them, doing workshops, activities that teach them how to be more efficient and sustainable with their crops.

Right now we are facing the challenge of regenerative agriculture. As a society, we are destroying our soils. That is why at Damm, we are thinking and acting against this problem. We do research and different tests to see how we can restore soils, and use less pesticides and fertilizers. 

Collaboration with startups is key. We are experts in making beer, but we may not be the best at optimizing the use of soil, or different seeds, predicting the state of our crops, and much more. That’s why we need the help of specialized companies that can provide us with all this information, and help us move forward in a fast and sustainable way.”

 

Presentation from Leanox, impact focused micro VC

We concluded the event by giving the stage to a newly founded impact focused micro-VC, Leanox.

Moritz Zanetti has a background in Life Science Innovation Management at the Wageningen University and Research with a minor in Entrepreneurship. After a science-based curriculum, he pivoted towards business to bridge the gap between innovation in science and technology and its business applications in the agri-food, health, and wellness context. 

Leanox brings its expertise, advice, and network to founders, by connecting purpose-driven bright minds with investors who seek impact beyond returns. Specializing in seed funding, they invest in sustainability-driven startups.

”It’s really hard to measure impact in the VC landscape, and is very hard to have a unique vision about impact. So its really about assessing each case individually, and get to know the real drive of the founders, to see what their real intentions are with their projects”.

Thank you!

To close the event, we had the chance to mingle with all the attendees for some tapas provided by Heura, one of the Barcelona Food & FoodTech Innovation Hub residents members.

A big thanks go to our partner Talent Garden for hosting us as we build and foster Barcelona’s FoodTech community. And, last but not least, thank you to all the participants who made this event so insightful. The incredible entrepreneurial talent who came together during this occasion is a testament to the vibrant FoodTech community that Spain offers!

About our Barcelona FoodTech Innovation Hub

Hosted in the heart of the vibrant Poblenou area, The Food & FoodTech Innovation Hub is Barcelona’s first shared workspace dedicated to AgriFoodTech innovation. Powered by Forward Fooding in partnership with Talent Garden, the Barcelona Hub is the ideal destination for startups and scaleups looking to connect with like-minded entrepreneurs and the go-to-place where collaborations between established organizations and startup companies spark.

Want to learn more about our work at Forward Fooding? Get in touch to learn more!