New statistics suggest that investment into European food technology is set to worsen further this year, but with little clarity as to whether this will remain an ongoing trend.
Blaming geopolitical unrest and a reticent VC landscape, Forward Fooding’s FoodTech Data Navigator suggests that investment is set to fall by 30% this year, which will itself be 70% lower than that raised in 2021. Three years ago, statistics suggest that investment in this sector topped $14.7bn, but is now projected to reach $4.7bn this year.
Despite this, other figures (such as from Dealroom) suggest that while investment in food technology has fallen, the declines in Europe have not been as precipitous as those in North America or the Asia and Oceania regions. Dealroom’s figures suggest that food technology VC funding fell from $12bn to $5bn in North America between 2022 and 2023, $6bn to $4bn in Europe, and $10bn to $4bn across the Asia and Oceania regions. If true, this means that the declines in Europe remain broadly in line with other parts of the world.
Other statistics offer a refutation, suggesting that this sector may struggle with differing definitions of ‘food technology’. A report from the DigitalFoodLab, and sponsored by Nestle, called State of the European Foodtech Ecosystem, suggests that funding for startups in this space was twice that of 2019 and 2020 in 2023, despite a fall of 36% from 2022. But those statistics, admitted DigitalFoodLab, come from its own proprietary database.
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Added into this mix is a report last month from FoodLabs and Dealroom, Food for Climate: the State of the Sustainable Food- & Agtech Ecosystem in Europe. This report said that 2023 saw this sector pull in over $2bn in funding, surpassing the US for the first time. This year, the authors predicted, would see a projected return to pre-pandemic levels. Its statistics further say that investment went from $1.4bn in 2020, to $1.7bn in 2021, before reaching $2.1bn in 2022. A slight fall to $2bn followed in 2023, with FoodLabs currently predicting a fall this year to $1.1bn.
Dealroom’s statistics do suggest that there is a huge disparity between European nations as to where the investment is headed. After the US, the country receiving most food technology in investment in 2023 was the UK, at $878.7m. This was followed by Germany, with $822.7m; and France, at $591.4m. The Netherlands receives the fourth-highest level of VC funding in Europe, at just $278m.
