Scotland-based Enough, a mycoprotein start-up, has announced that it raised €40m ($43.6m) in growth funding to expand operations and “double in size” by next year.
The round was co-led by World Fund, a climate technology venture capital fund, and CPT Capital, the food-tech-focussed existing investor.
The new growth funding brings the total capital raised by Enough to over €95m. The food-tech company is aiming to serve a growing customer demand for its products, according to its latest press release.
Formerly known as 3F Bio, Enough, based in Glasgow, Scotland, produces a mycoprotein product called Abunda through fermentation technology. The company has a team of 56, located in Scotland, England and the Netherlands, and aims to “double in size in the next year”.
The factory will produce 10,000 metric tonnes of Abunda per year, but the manufacturer is planning to increase production to more than 60,000 tonnes annually. The company aims to grow over one million tonnes of the product cumulatively by 2032.
At the same time, the food-tech enterprise is also growing its teams across its offices in Glasgow, London and Sas van Gent.
In 2021, Unilever said it was planning on a partnership with the company, as mycoprotein is a natural fit for its meat-alternative brand The Vegetarian Butcher, which was sold in 45 countries across four continents and is used by fast-food chain Burger King for products such as the Plant-Based Whopper already in 2021.
“Enough has made great strides in the past few years to launch our new factory in the Netherlands and scale up to work with customers across the UK and Europe. With this new funding, we will accelerate that growth,” said Jim Laird, co-founder and CEO of Enough. “The alternative protein market is a multi-billion dollar opportunity, and the ethical and environmental reasons to embrace non-animal protein sources are more pressing than ever.“
The company is aiming to market the ingredient for on-trade and off-trade venues such as supermarkets, foodservice clients, and fast-food brands as well, to be used in alternative meat and dairy products. The technology enables large-scale manufacturing of the product, said Enough in a statement.
“The company is tackling crucial bottlenecks in the creation of sustainable protein, whilst using fewer resources and maintaining a zero waste process, which is enabling Enough to have a lower carbon footprint compared to other plant-based protein sources, whilst producing at scale and providing supply security to a growing market,” said Craig Douglas, founding partner at World Fund.
One of the company’s future clients is European poultry processor, Plukon Food Group, which is developing non-animal chicken and meat products that are comparable to its traditional product range.
The Scotland-based enterprise has recently opened a protein factory in Sas van Gent, in The Netherlands, to create its mycoprotein food ingredient at scale. The plant is co-located alongside a Cargill facility.
Earlier this year, Quorn owner Monde Nissin had set up a division to sell the mycoprotein ingredient behind the international flagship brand Quorn to other food manufacturers.
UK-based Marlow Ingredients will be a new B2B arm supplying mycoprotein to other companies initially in Europe and then internationally.
