Vegan Protein Startup Enough Secures US$51M Series B Co-Led By Dutch Animal Feed Major Nutreco

Food tech startup Enough, formerly known as 3F Bio, secured €42 million ($51 million) in a Series B round for its flagship mycoprotein product—Abunda—which is used by companies to produce alternative meats and dairy products.

Scotland and Netherlands-based Enough’s Series B round was co-led by aquafeed giant Nutreco and Olympic Investments, an arm of the Onassis Foundation set up by the 20th century Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis.

Other investors who participated in the round include AXA IM Alts, part of French insurance giant Axa, through its AXA Impact Fund-Climate & Biodiversity, along with HAL Investments and Tailored Solutions. Existing investors too were present like Scottish Enterprise and CPT Capital with the latter as Enough’s single largest shareholder.

Mycoprotein Abunda

The company uses a zero-waste fermentation process to grow a mycoprotein product –  Abunda. It is developed from fungi fed with renewable agriculture feedstock, contains all essential amino acids, and is high in fibre.

Enough sells this protein to companies that use it as a base ingredient to produce alternative meat, seafood, and dairy products. Among notable names it has partnered with consumer goods giant Unilever, which uses Abunda in its Vegetarian Butcher line of plant-based products, as well as supermarket chain Marks & Spencer, which uses it to create vegan products.

“The market for delicious, nutritious vegan products is growing at a pace that requires a step change in the supply of sustainable ingredients,” CEO of Enough, Jim Laird said in a statement. “This will supercharge our focus which prioritises collaboration and B2B supply to maximise the pace of growth and reach into the market.”

He added that the company is privileged to be supported from investors who share the same focus on making sustainable protein. “As a longstanding dedicated investor in the alternative protein space, CPT Capital has unmatched experience investing in companies disrupting the food systems. We are delighted to strengthen the Board with the combination of expertise and impact focus from AXA IM Alts who have a long history of impact investment, Nutreco who provide strategic insights, and by HAL Investments who share our view regarding the need for scalable technologies and food products to cater for growth of alternative proteins and meat substitutes in decades to come.”

We are delighted to strengthen the Board with the combination of Nutreco who provide strategic insights, and by HAL Investments who share our view regarding the need for scalable technologies and food products to cater for growth of alternative proteins and meat substitutes in decades to come

Jim Lairdsaid, CEO of Enough

CEO of Nutreco, Rob Koremans said “Enough is an exciting business with real potential to transform protein
production. This partnership perfectly supports our ambitions to accelerate the contribution we can make to the
challenge of feeding a growing global population. If we are serious about meeting this objective in a sustainable
way, we will need to produce protein from a variety of sources such as fermentation, which is very much a shared
goal.”

In the past, Enough received seed funding from Silicon Valley’s DCVC and others, followed by a £6.16 million ($8.51 million) Series A round, and a further €17 million ($20.2 million) grant from the EU’s Horizon 2020 program.

Enough’s Mission

The company’s mission is to grow 1 million tonnes of its mycoprotein each year by 2032. If it succeeds, it will remove 5 million cows or 1 billion chickens from the global food system and slash emissions by six million tonnes over the same period.

If we are serious about meeting this objective in a sustainable way, we will need to produce protein from a variety of sources such as fermentation, which is very much a shared goal

Rob Koremans, CEO of Nutreco

First-of-its-kind Biorefinery

In addition, Enough is building a protein facility, a biorefinery in the Netherlands, which in the initial phase will have the capacity to produce 10,000 tonnes of Abunda per year. Later, over the next decade, it will produce up to a million tonnes of the ingredient. The facility is being backed and funded by the E.U.’s Bio-Based Industries Joint Undertaking.

The food tech will even participated at the upcoming U.N. Climate Change Conference, COP26, to present the merits of its highly-scalable solution as a way forward towards building a sustainable food system.

Lead image courtesy of Enough.