July 1, 2021

photo credit: Mycorena

By Lynda Kiernan-Stone, Global AgInvesting Media

It’s a myco-palooza lately.

Swedish mycoprotein pioneer Mycorena has completed a Pre-Series A round for SEK 77 million (US$9 million), marking one of the largest funding rounds for a Nordic vegan food tech startup made to-date, and bringing total funding for the company to SEK 100 million (US$11 million).

Founded in 2017 in Gothenburg as a spin-off from research being conducted by company founder and CEO Ramkumar Nair,  Mycorena is now one of the rapidly growing food tech startups in Sweden, and a global leader in the production of mycoprotein.

With a vision to being the world’s leading brand for fungi-based products, its flagship offering Promyc is sustainably made by applying fermentation to food by-products and unused resources from its network of partners that would otherwise have gone to waste. Although not a new technology, Mycorena improves the process with state-of-the-art technology, and in the use of specific strains of a family of filamentous fungi with proven nutritional and safety values.

The nature of this fungi makes the production process highly efficient, and Promyc is already being tested as a protein ingredient in multiple commercial vegan products being sold in Scandinavia.

Leading this round was VEOS Group – a Belgian global supplier of proteins and functional ingredients. Joining VEOS was the majority of the company’s existing investors including two of its largest – FBG Invest and Bånt AB – along with several unnamed new investors.

“FBG Invest had joined Mycorena at an early stage and a mutual trust has since long been created between us and the Mycorena team,” said Jörgen Hallgren, FBG Invest. “Sustainable protein is the future of food production, and moving on to demonstrate its large-scale production, will take the company much further in its growth.”

This funding will be used for multiple purposes. Mycorena had previously announced its plans to build a new production facility in Falkenberg, Sweden, which will be the first-of-its-kind in the country.

Scheduled to be operational by mid-2022, the funding from this round will serve to fast-track the advancement of this project for large-scale Promyc production. It also will be used by Mycorena to position the company for rapid commercialization through an aggressive expansion of its team, the strengthening of its R&D and IP capabilities, and production scaleup, noted Nair. 

“I have followed Mycorena for many years and seen how they have developed as a company. With the worldwide protein shift in full development, I have no doubt of the brilliant future that lies ahead of them,” said Robert Slee, VEOS Group.

Sverker Forsén with Bånt AB added, “I strongly believe in the prospects of Mycorena and feel very excited to be able to continue supporting a great team with a great product in an extremely attractive global market.”

This attractive global market is a siren song for other myco-based startups as well. Only days ago GAI News shared that Scottish startup ENOUGH (formerly 3F BIO) announced it had closed on a $51 million Series B to advance its production of ABUNDA – its own sustainable, vegan mycoprotein. 

By 2032, ENOUGH is targeting production of over one million tons – the equivalent of replacing 5 million cows, more than 1 billion chickens – or – reducing more than 6 million tons of CO2 emissions, or planting more than 30 million trees.

Like ENOUGH, Mycorena stated that its Promyc mycoprotein uses eight times less water than conventional chicken production, and produces 23 times less CO2 than the production of a single beef burger. 

There is also Colorado-based MycoTechnology, which has raised $120 million in support of its mushroom fermentation tech platform and its flagship product ClearTaste®,  and Nature’s Fynd, which might be the mycoprotein startup with the most funding to-date, at $158 million.

Through the company’s process, high-protein extremophile microbes are fed starches or glycerin, which then rapidly multiply resulting in the production of the organism Fusarium Yellowstonensis, or Fy™ (“fai”) – a newly-discovered fungi-based source of complete protein, dietary fiber, calcium, and vitamins that can be formulated to be a solid, powder, or liquid, and can be either savory or sweet.

Highly adaptable, this animal-free (but not really plant-based either) protein alternative can not only be used to make meat, egg, and dairy alternatives, or snacks such as dips, but can also be widely used as an ingredient by other manufacturers, or in animal feed.

– Lynda Kiernan-Stone is editor with GAI Media, and is managing editor and daily contributor for Global AgInvesting’s AgInvesting Weekly News and  Agtech Intel News, as well as HighQuest Group’s Oilseed & Grain News. She can be reached at lkiernan@globalaginvesting.com.