Every week we feature a new startup at Fundsup that forces a radical breakthrough. This time we chat with Carlos Cabrera who is the Managing Director and Founder of Greencovery.
Read the Dutch version on Emerce.
Carlos, what exactly are you doing?
We created Greencovery -3 years ago- to enable the transition to a circular food production by upcycling ingredients from companies’ side-streams.
We accelerate the implementation of these solutions by providing our novel separation technology (IP), market access for the produced ingredients and implementation together with our customers. Our novel separation technology can produce high quality and purity ingredients with low environmental impact and cost.
Our goal is to make upcycling the norm and accessible to many companies.
Where do you see its main application?
We focus in upcycling side-streams from the food industry to high value ingredients such as fruity and savoury flavours, supplements and binders for the plant-based and sport nutrition markets.
What is the impact of your business?
We are working to make low carbon ingredients the industry’s standard. That’s why we are betting on bringing our solution to multiple companies and enable them to produce environmentally responsible ingredients. To give you an example, one of our ingredients has 60% lower carbon footprint than its counterparts. Our goal is to make this possible for more than 100 companies in the coming years.
Where do you stand right now?
We are working with several food companies to implement our solution to their side-stream and introduce these ingredients to the market. Some examples are a banana flavour produced from vinegar side-stream, a natural preservative produced from acid whey and a natural umami flavour extract.
In October we are producing our first ton of product to be introduced to the market by one of our partners.
In the next 2 months we are creating samples of 2 other ingredients to be sent to our partners for testing.
When are you planning to go to the market?
Next year (2022) our first ingredient is introduced to the market. On the meantime we are developing together with our customers other applications that will follow-up in our pipeline.
Who has invested in you and what kind of investors are you looking for?
We have been operating with revenue generated from paid trials from our customers. Recently, we received an angel investment from Oterap B.V. who brings a vast experience in the ingredients market. We also received non-dilutive investments from StartLife and more recently Mibiton Foundation. The investments of Oterap and Mibiton are used to invest in our trial and sample generation equipment to increase our customers implementation.
We are looking for investors to participate in our seed investment with experience and network on the food and ingredients market.
What would be the ideal investor match?
Apart from the qualities we just mentioned, the most logical step We are looking for impact investors who are looking to invest in a company looking to change the side-streams status quo. An ideal investor has knowledge and network in the food and ingredients market, experienced in investing in high tech (IP) companies and creating alternative business models and partnerships within the food industry.
Best of luck with everything!
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