Weekly Roundup: Symrise Diana Food enhances farming traceability, Tridge secures US$60M to tackle food insecurity

16 Jul 2021 --- This week in industry news, Symrise Diana Food deployed a digital solution to enhance traceability of global farming and sourcing practices. South Korean agrifood trading platform Tridge secured a US$60 million investment to scale up the fight against food insecurity. Meanwhile, Suja Life was acquired by Paine Schwartz Partners, and Planterra Foods inked an agreement with MycoTechnology to accelerate plant-based innovation.

In brief: Business moves
Symrise Diana Food agreed with SMAG Smart Agriculture to develop a customized mobile software app that will digitize the global agronomic activities of Symrise Diana Food. The app, which is part of the SMAG Agreo business software platform, will create a digital agro-community composed of Symrise Diana Food’s 13 global agronomists and its fruit and vegetable producers. The software will improve scalability, facilitate continuity plans and promote traceability.

Angel Yeast has unveiled its new purpose-built yeast and biotechnology R&D center in China.Tridge, a digital trading and market intelligence hub for food and agriculture players, has completed Series C investment worth US$60 million from Forest Partners. This is to help it scale and meet demand from food businesses searching globally for alternative ingredient sources as traditional supply lines are hit by increasing disruption and risk. This investment edges Tridge closer to being one of South Korea’s next tech unicorns with a current market value of US$500 million, up from US$140 million since its last funding round in April 2020.

Angel Yeast has opened the doors of its purpose-built complex for industry technology research and development. The complex marks a significant milestone for the group’s scientific research process, as Angel Yeast continues to support the technological advancement of the biotechnology industry. Located in Yichang City, Hubei Province in central China, the center spans 36,000 square meters and can house up to 1,500 people engaged in R&D and related work. Planning for the project first commenced in October 2019, and more than CNY 196 million (US$30 million) has been invested to date.

In brief: Acquisitions
Suja Life, the California-based company, specializing in cold-pressured, organic beverages, has been acquired by Paine Schwartz Partners, a global player in sustainable food chain investing, from Goldman Sachs Asset Management and co-investors. This news comes after an unprecedented year for Suja in both revenue and profit. Financial details of the transaction have not been disclosed.

In brief: Other highlights
Planterra Foods, a Colorado-based start-up, has announced a Master Collaboration Agreement with MycoTechnology, a food ingredient company focused on “moving food forward by infusing human ingenuity with the intelligence of nature.” The agreement was designed to strengthen the ingredient partnership between the two companies as they plan to accelerate development technologies toKemin Food Technologies has introduced an interactive “Tortilla Doctor” digital tool. improve the quality of plant-based proteins. Over the past year, Planterra’s brand of OZO plant-based products have been made with MycoTechnology’s pea and rice protein fermented by Shiitake mycelia, the roots of Shiitake mushrooms. This step of entering a Master Collaboration Agreement is expected to expand the levels of collaboration between an ingredients company and a final consumer goods company. The agreement also allows much closer cooperation between the two company’s R&D teams, which could lead to shared ownership of intellectual property.

Kemin Industries is offering manufacturers access to a new interactive tool, the “Flour Tortilla Doctor,” on the Food Technologies section of the Kemin website for North America. Designed to solve many processes and quality issues, including shelf life extension and operational efficiency, the “Flour Tortilla Doctor” ensures tortilla performance and delivers a product that consumers will enjoy.

The milk trucks of FrieslandCampina that are on the road are becoming increasingly sustainable, the dairy company maintains. Over the last decade, it has managed to reduce the CO2 emissions per kilometer of transport between farms and production locations by 18.1 percent. Today, another step is taken to further improve the sustainability of milk transport by putting the first 50 metric tons hydrogen-powered milk truck into use. Currently, only the infrastructure in the Groningen region, in the Netherlands, allows for the use of hydrogen milk trucks, but possibilities to expand to other parts of the countries are under investigation.

By Elizabeth Green