Future Food Fund, a €12mn Dutch specialist venture capital fund that provides early-stage capital for agriculture technology (agtech) startups, is considering launching a second fund next year.
“We are seeing increasing interest in the sector from investors,” Jeroen Kimmels, co-founder and managing partner of Future Food Fund (FFF), told Impact Investor.
“Our current fund is slowly filling up, so it is time for a second fund. Just like the first one, it will be aimed at Dutch food and agribusinesses that look to disrupt the food value chain. FFF2 will have the same set-up, but it will be considerably larger.”
Strong investor appetite
“We are being approached by a lot of investors, so the potential is there,” said Kimmels. “There is so much attention focused on the sector, you could perhaps raise the equivalent of the current fund many times over. But the question is whether that is sensible. You have to balance it with the growth of the deal flow, after all.”
FFF was founded in 2017 with an investment capital of €12mn. Half of that was raised by 30 entrepreneurs, all with strong track records in food and agriculture or technology. The remainder came from the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy.
Greater emphasis on impact
Since its inception FFF has invested in six companies: packaging-free online supermarket Pieter Pot, biodegradable foam producer Foamplant, soil restoring company Thatchtec, AvL Motion, which produces harvester robots for white asparagus, and biotech company Phenospex.
Last month FFF announced a €1.1mn investment in Moovement, an Australian-Dutch startup that produces solar-charged GPS ear tags for beef cattle in Australia.
FFF 2 will have a greater emphasis on impact than the first fund, said Kimmels. Although FFF is still looking into how exactly it wants to do this, “we will certainly start monitoring impact while also more clearly defining our areas of investment that we believe will be central to a future sustainable food and agriculture system,” he said.
You can read our profile of Future Food Fund here.
