Page 10 - Food&Drink magazine November-December 2022

NEWS
Beston Global Food launches $28m raise
BESTON Global Food Company has launched a $28.2 million capital raise to accelerate growth, retire debt, and reset its balance sheet. It plans to invest in several high ROI manufacturing projects to accelerate profit and sustainability improvements, including the vertical integration of its cheese processing capabilities.
Beston also plans to expand its role in the bioactive protein and nutraceuticals space, with trials to extract immunoglobulins from milk underway. These have high bioreactive proteins that support the immune system.
The raise would be split with $16 million clearing debt, $7.5 million on ROI manufacturing projects,
$3 million on bioactive protein and nutraceuticals, and $1.7 million for costs. If successful, Beston will invest in a third Lactoferrin extraction column, to increase its output by six to eight tonnes. ✷
Beston’s Murray Bridge Facility.
Nourish Ingredients feeds its growth
FOOD tech start-up Nourish Ingredients has completed a Series A funding round, raising $45.6 million (US$28.6 million). The raise was led by Horizons Ventures and supported by Main Sequence Ventures
and Hostplus. Nourish Ingredients
specialises in making animal- free fats and oils for alternative proteins. It was founded in 2019 and has pioneered a yeast fermentation process that allows it to mimic the molecular structure of animal fats. This helps create better tasting and more sustainable non-animal fats for plant-based and cell-based food products.
Nourish Ingredients is the latest Australian alternative protein company to complete a successful funding raise, with alternative protein-based food industries are on the private equity radar, despite
a cooling of the retail market this year.
Partner at CSIRO’s venture capital fund Main Sequence, Phil Morle, says it’s an exciting time to be a venture capitalist because there are big problems to solve, and making enough
food for 10 billion people while we’re running out of land is one of them.
At this year’s Future Food-Tech (FFT) conference, research firm Crunchbase said US$12.8 billion was invested in food tech through almost 1000 deals in 2021, double the amount invested in 2020.
Meanwhile, one of Australia’s most recognised plant-based meat brands v2food raised $78 million in a
The Nourish Ingredients team (left to right): Dr Surinder Singh, chief scientist, Dr James Petrie, CEO and co-founder, Dr Ben Leita, co-founder, Dr Anna El Tahchy, chief technical officer.
Series B Plus funding round last year as it embarked on expansion into China and South-East Asian markets. It has raised $185 million since it launched in 2019 and is now valued at more than $500 million. It was valued at $2 million when it launched. ✷
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10 | Food&Drink business | November-December 2022 | www.foodanddrinkbusiness.com.au