Agfunder, a US-based venture-capital firm focusing on “food tech and agtech”, has a new fund focusing on an emerging part of the industry.
The investor, based in San Francisco, said the US$20m fund would look at backing start-ups in “alternative protein”, including plant-based meats and plus, cultivated meat, which is also known as cell-based meat.
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Founding partner Rob Leclerc pointed to the benefits that accrued to early investors in Beyond Meat, the US meat-alternative business, which floated earlier this year.
“An investor who put $1m into Beyond Meat’s Series A selling today could realise a 316x return; and Impossible Foods is poised to follow a similar trajectory,” Leclerc said. “But in a $2.17 trillion market for animal products, we believe there are still many new opportunities to create new multi-billion-dollar companies.”
Agfunder has also released a whitepaper that sets outs the status of the alternative-protein market. In the study, Agfunder says more than half the world’s population is “now considered middle class or wealthier”, a level the firm says and will increase to two-thirds by 2030.
“Middle classes typically eat more meat and protein,” the investor said, adding: “To provide enough meat to the world at the current US consumption levels of 99.5kg/capital this would require 88% more farmland than is available today. Even if current global consumption of 44kg/capital remains static, 100% of global farmland would need to be directed to animal agriculture in coming years.
“By 2025, 10% of meat supply could be plant-based and by 2040, as much as 60% of meat supply will be alternatives (35% cultivated meat and 25% plant-based) making conventional meat a nice market.”
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