Each day at 5 p.m. we collect the five top food and supplement headlines of the day, making it easy for you to catch up on today's most important natural products industry news.

January 30, 2018

2 Min Read
5@5: Big (investment) deals for Ripple, Memphis Meats | Organic on the rise in EU countries

Tyson invests in lab-grown protein startup Memphis Meats, joining Bill Gates and Richard Branson

Already a backer of vegan startup Beyond Meat, Tyson is expanding its investment portfolio to include lab-grown meat maker Memphis Meats. Bill Gates, Richard Branson and Cargill are already investors in the San Francisco-based company, which is developing beef, chicken and duck meat grown in a lab from animal cells. “We want to work with them (Tyson) to scale,” said CEO and co-founder Uma Valeti. “Cost is the main focus for us.” Read more at Forbes…

 

Goldman Sachs invests in pea milk startup

The potential of the humble yellow pea just scored alt-milk brand Ripple a $65 million investment, bringing its total funding to $110 million. The new round comes from a mixed bag of investors, including Goldman Sachs, tech-focused Khosla Ventures, food-focused S2G Ventures and Fall Line Capital, which invests in farmland and agricultural technologies. Ripple’s pea protein ingredient, Ripptein, is extracted by a proprietary process that also strips out the funky flavor. Read more at Bloomberg Technology…

 

Organic farming booms in Bulgaria and Croatia

Organic production in Bulgaria grew 310 percent between 2012 and 2016, according to new data from the European Statistics Agency, and more than 190 percent in Croatia, making them the EU member states with the highest growing organic farming sectors. They also have the largest shares of land being converted to organic. On the other end of the growth chart is Romania, where the total share of farmed area that’s organic actually fell 20 percent between 2012 and 2016. Read more at Balkan Insight…

 

Ban called for chocolate price promotions in bid to curb obesity

Action on Sugar, a UK nonprofit, is calling for a ban on price promotions for large bags of chocolate known as sharing bags, which can contain nearly 30 teaspoons of sugar. Read more at Diabetes.co.uk…

 

This ‘Shark Tank’ pitch for healthy protein doughnuts landed a $300,000 investment from Barbara Corcoran

The Dough Bar launched in 2015 to bring Instagram-worthy baked doughnuts boosted with wheat, soy and whey protein isolates, to fitness-minded foodies. It’s a direct-to-consumer play—the company ships the donuts plain, and then customers can decorate them with toppings and glaze. Investor Barbara Corcoran offered a $300,000 investment for a 20 percent stake. Read more at CNBC…

Subscribe and receive the latest updates on trends, data, events and more.
Join 57,000+ members of the natural products community.

You May Also Like