BayWa Venture Ltd, the processing and packaging machine expert MULTIVAC and the Bindewald and Gutting Mühlengruppe are jointly investing around 20 million euros in AgriFoodTech start-ups.
Promoting innovative solutions for sustainable food production: That is the mission of the newly renamed AgriFoodTech Venture GmbH. The alliance is based on the existing activities of BayWa Venture GmbH, a subsidiary of BayWa AG . Over the past three years, as the investment arm of BayWa AG, it has invested in twelve promising AgriFoodTech start-ups that help make the value chain in the food sector more sustainable.
Germany's largest family-run milling group, Bindewald and Gutting, as well as MULTIVAC , a provider of processing and packaging solutions, will participate in this commitment as shareholders in the future. As part of a capital increase of almost 10 million euros, they are investing equal shares in BayWa Venture Ltd, which has been renamed AgriFoodTech Venture Ltd. BayWa remains the majority shareholder with 51 percent.
"The fact that our work with start-ups has now resulted in this collaboration is a great success," says Marcus Pöllinger, CEO of BayWa AG. "With the AgriFoodTech Venture Alliance, we will become a strategically important investor in the market and can further expand our pioneering role as an active designer of agricultural and food transformation."
The existing BayWa venture start-up portfolio with twelve growth companies from Europe, Israel and the USA will be brought into the alliance. With the help of the joint investment sum, the portfolio will be expanded to around 20 start-ups . The focus of the new alliance is on financing start-ups that use new technologies to make food production and packaging both economical and more sustainable.
Cooperation, investment and impact rethought together
The AgriFoodTech Venture Alliance will act both as a financial investor and as a supporting cooperation partner. In addition to traditional financing, the start-ups also benefit from the global network and the entrepreneurial and technical know-how of the alliance partners involved. The alliance partners, in turn, can profitably bring the innovative strength and speed of the start-ups into their companies. With the common goal of promoting new technologies for future food production in an economically successful and impact-oriented merger.
Source: vegconomist.de