Agri-food tech accelerator selects disruptive start-ups tackling global food challenges

11 Sep 2020 --- Nine European start-ups making waves in the agri-food space have been selected by Dutch tech accelerator StartLife for its 2020 fall cohort.

The start-ups are introducing new technologies that tackle global challenges such as diminishing food waste, boosting sustainable production and enhancing productivity.

StartLife helps the burgeoning businesses with funding, training and global partnerships and 2020 marks its tenth year in operation. 

Agriculture is among the least digitized of all major industries. With technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, machine learning, encapsulation, RFID and spectrometers, StartLife’s new batch of start-ups is keen to modernize and reshape the food industry. 

The following companies make up StartLife’s fifth cohort:

• Blakbear (UK): Package-level freshness visibility boosting product shelf-life.
• Healthycrop (Denmark): Solutions that enable fungicide free agriculture.
• Iamus (Ireland): Revolutionize the poultry industry with robotics and AI.
• KomraVision (Estonia): Material analysis with next-generation dynamic optics.
• Mylium (Netherlands): Developing fungi-based textiles.
• Plantik (France): Engineering the plants of tomorrow, unthinkably faster.
• Sphera Encapsulation (Italy): Sustainable encapsulation technologies.
• TuttiFoodi (Netherlands): 100 percent natural food preservation technology.
• Vertigo (Netherlands): Quality control for fresh fruit with microwave measurements.

Growing into global enterprises
“The road from a minimal viable product to a successful star-tup is a big jigsaw puzzle. We have to assess at an early stage if we can help find and connect the right pieces together,” says Loet Rammelsberg, program director of StartLife.

StartLife has built, supported and funded more than 300 start-ups, propeling breakthrough technologies in the domains of food and agriculture.“We hope the newly selected start-ups will follow in the footsteps of successful StartLife alumni like Nutrileads, Hudson River Biotechnology and Cerescon and high potentials like Orbisk and FUMI Ingredients.”

The start-ups are planning a deep dive into their businesses. They will refine their propositions and prepare for attracting growth capital and partnerships that will spur their business development. 

On December 9, the start-ups will finalize the acceleration program with a presentation to an international audience of investors, corporates and other stakeholders from the agri-food industry.

“We had already planned to open our program to more international start-ups. We realized that a virtual program would enable entrepreneurs who are not based in the Netherlands to reap the benefits of our wide support more easily. In a way you could say we are ‘zooming’ our way into Europe,” adds Rammelsberg.

Sustainability and personalized nutrition
Since its foundation in 2010, Wageningen-based StartLife has built, supported and funded more than 300 start-ups, propelling breakthrough technologies in the domains of food and agriculture.

In a previous interview with FoodIngredientsFirst, Caroline Bijkerk, global partnerships manager at StartLife, detailed the crucial role start-ups play in helping big corporations bring key trends, such as sustainability and personalized nutrition, to consumers. 

The company supports food and agri-tech start-ups as they grow into global enterprises.

Edited by Gaynor Selby