Planted Foods AG raises 7 million Swiss francs
The Swiss ETH Spin-off, Planted, creates tasty plant-based meat that mimics the taste, texture and mouthfeel of animal meat. For its seed financing round, Planted raised seven million Swiss francs. The capital will be used to scale-up production, accelerate research & development and expand beyond its home market Switzerland.
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Growing population along with increasing life expectancy and incomes are major drivers for the rise in global meat demand. However, the current scale of the meat industry is beyond sustainable. Recognizing that meat is synonymous with culture, family and indulgence, Planted found a way to retain the positive attributes of traditional meat while removing the negatives.
Planted uses technology to skip the animal and turn natural plant-based ingredients into meat that mimics the taste, texture and mouthfeel of animal meat. For its first product, planted.chickenTM, only carefully selected and all-natural ingredients are used: pea protein, pea fiber, sunflower oil and water. Nothing else.
The technology developed by the Swiss start-up, allows Planted to:
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mimic the fiber structure of various meat types
use all-natural ingredients without the need for additives
flexibly choose the protein source
add the juiciness consumers miss with conventional meat analogues
In the recent seed round, Planted Foods AG was able to raise seven million Swiss francs in capital that will be used for research & development, market expansion abroad and production scale-up.
Scaling up production
“This seed round will allow us to match the strong demand for our all-natural, 100% clean planted.chickenTM in Switzerland and abroad,” says Co-Founder Christoph Jenny. “We are planning to enter key European markets with our existing planted.chickenTM, as well as launch our new pulled pork product line," says Co-Founder Pascal Bieri.
In order to match the soaring demand for new sustainable food products, the Company will make significant investments. “We will increase our production capacity to transform plant-proteins into meat by more than ten times,'' says Co-Founder Eric Stirnemann. “The funding will allow us to further strengthen our cutting-edge R&D and continuously craft the tastiest products,'' says Co-Founder Lukas Böni.
The investors of the seed rounds are well diversified with both smart and industry-focused investors including Blue Horizon Corporation, Hiltl AG, Good Seed Ventures, Mica Ventures, and Joyance Partners. And with private investors such as Stephan Schmidheiny Family, Ze.Pharm Trust, Josef Bieri, Philippe Gaydoul, and investors from the Swiss Startup Capital Investors Club amongst others joining as well. In addition the ETH Foundation also participated in the round with its ETH spinoff fund.
Legal advice was provided by Peter Kuhn of MME.
Planted is or was enrolled in the following programs & accelerators. Thank you for all your support: ETH Pioneer Fellowship, Venturekick, Masschallenge Switzerland, Venture Award, Kickstart, EIT Climate-KIC, SEIF Award and InnoBooster.
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