HowGood

The world’s largest sustainability intelligence database

Helping companies improve their environmental and social impact through the worlds largest sustainability database, Latis.

Entrepreneurs
Alexander Gillett, Arthur Gillet

Founded
2007

Partnered
2022

HQ
Stone Ridge, New York, USA

Category
Connecting the Value Chain

Leveraging data to meet the increasing demand for product transparency

HowGood is a SaaS data platform with the world’s largest database on food and personal care product sustainability. With more than 33,000 ingredients, chemicals and materials assessed, HowGood helps leading suppliers, brands and retailers understand and improve their environmental and social impact, through a global and detailed understanding of the impacts of their products.

Drawing from over a decade of research mapping the global supply system for a wide range of industries including food and cosmetics, HowGood´s solution addresses the growing demand for product sustainability and transparency across the value chain.

HowGood’s data set, which is consistently updated with the most recent findings from across over 500 sources, provides all-encompassing insights cover GHG emissions, water usage, labor risks, animal welfare, biodiversity, land use or soil health, among many others.These insights allow clients to improve purchasing decisions by measuring, comparing and analyzing the impact of both individual products and the aggregate impact across their portfolio of products. With HowGood’s solution, their clients become equipped to favor products with stronger positive or regenerative impacts across a portfolio of options.

HowGood’s impact starts with the companies it guides through product decisions and has a ripple effect that influences the entire value chain. Because their solution provides easily comparable information on product attributes, the HowGood ratings system encourages producers to boost sustainability across their products, and allows retailers, and ultimately consumers, to make sustainability-driven purchases and reward those brands with the highest positive impact.

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Astanor’s shared values in technology and planetary health make them the ideal partner for us. Together, HowGood and Astanor will support a regenerative and sustainable food system that harnesses the power of data with actionable insights.

HowGood News

ProducePay

Empowering growers from seed to sale

We find, finance, and fulfill grower supply for importers of fresh produce – a partner to growers from first planting to final liquidation.

Entrepreneurs
Pablo Borquez

Founded
2014

Partnered
2021

HQ
Los Angeles, California

Category
Connecting the Value Chain

At ProducePay, we are transforming the produce industry.

ProducePay is a US Based Ag-tech/Fin-tech startup that lets farmers focus on farming by making all other elements of the industry predictable, transparent and fair. ProducePay’s network, technology and financing give farmers access to an efficient market, providing financial independence. Their innovative solutions directly impact and improve the livelihoods of the stakeholders most disadvantaged by the food system. Today, ProducePay already serves hundreds of growers, distributors and receivers across the world.

The global produce market relies on highly complex, global supply chains and is quickly perishable, yet produce growers lack the capital, pricing information and market access necessary to succeed.
Impact is central to ProducePay’s mission. Their solutions provide flexible financing options and market data to empower historically disadvantaged farmers. Their products directly address inequities in the market due to market opacity and power structures to create information equity, income and business continuity.

ProducePay news

garten

Wellbeing at work, wherever you are

Garten provides fresh, nutritious food to workers at the office and at home.

Entrepreneurs
Michael Heinrich

Founded
2014

Partnered
2019

HQ
Burlingame, California, USA

Category
Connecting the Value Chain

Empowering people to lead healthy, productive lives

Research has proven that health and productivity go hand in hand, and the more healthful foods people consume during the day, the happier, more engaged and creative they become. Despite this, much of the food consumed in offices is unhealthy and highly processed. With up to 50% of meals being consumed at work, employees struggle to meet their health goals while employers suffer from decreased productivity. garten was founded to address these issues and to empower people to live healthy and blissful lives, no matter where they work.
garten is a workplace kitchen concierge serving nutritious snacks and meals through an innovative wellness platform that supports employees working in the office or at home. The company is redefining the enterprise food services sector by bringing wellness to the workplace and by educating the workforce around the benefits of good nutrition. garten incorporates AI and IoT technology to enhance supply chain management and improve personalized nutrition in the workplace. With its careful sourcing practices, garten also creates significant demand and revenue for organic and regenerative food producers in the areas where it operates. Beyond its diversity of food offerings, garten offers wellness services, such as yoga and meditation, to further improve employee health and happiness.

garten provides workplaces food that is 100% traceable, sourced locally within a radius of no more than 80 miles, and majority organic (>95%). The menu always includes vegetarian options, and 5% of leftover food is donated to cut down on waste.
By partnering with workplaces, garten can improve the diets of many people at once: individual users get access to personalized data, advice and food that meet their individual goals and health needs, while employers get access to a scalable, integrated platform that improves employee retention, morale and productivity. Research has shown that employees who eat healthily at work outperformed their less healthy peers by 25% (Source: British Journal of Heath Psychology).

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I feel incredibly fortune to have the entire Astanor team as a partner. Their incredible care and congruence in values and foresight during board meetings makes me feel at ease and deeply supported.

garten news

Hyris DNA

Food identity uncovered, one test at a time

The Hyris platform offers the disruptive capability to perform genetic analysis of biological samples in any kind of setting.

Entrepreneurs
Stefano Lo Priore

Founded
2014

Partnered
2019

HQ
Milan, Italy

Category
Connecting the Value Chain

From olive oil to viruses, Hyris is providing safety and reassurance

With as much as 10% of all foods we consume tainted by adulteration, food scandals are on the rise all over the world (Source: Federation of American Scientists). As more and more leading food companies suffer supply chain disruption and reputational damage, so too has their leadership become laser-focused on quality assurance and supply chain transparency.

Hyris offers distributed genetic testing that’s more convenient and scalable than existing options. Hyris aims to create global impact by providing the industries it serves, the first at-scale library of food safety data. It does this through its distributed network of bKITS (bespoke sets of reagents for specific DNA sequences) and bCUBES (a miniaturized portable device).

Hyris has focused its application on the nutrition sector, while also working with adjacent and complementary fields, such as pharmaceuticals, virology and epidemiology. In recent months, Hyris has been granted major regulatory authorizations for COVID-19 testing, including a ground breaking approval for point of care diagnostics by Health Canada.

Hyris DNA news

London-based Hyris closes Series A round for its food safety and COVID-19 surface testing kits

La Ruche Qui Dit Oui

Ultra fresh, trusted and high-quality food, from farm-to-fork

With a pan-European network of farmers and assemblies (ruches), local food distribution has never been more convenient or closer to home.

Entrepreneurs
Grégoire de Tilly

Founded
2010

Partnered
2018

HQ
Paris, France

Category
Connecting the Value Chain

La Ruche Qui Dit Oui is one of most iconic companies leading the ‘farm to table’ movement in Europe

Bringing value and transparency to the food system by multiplying farmer revenues, securing and growing their market access, and delivering consumers healthy and high-quality products, La Ruche leverages network effects to benefit the whole value chain.
Launched in 2010, La Ruche Qui Dit Oui is an innovative local food distribution system, which enables ultra-fresh commerce with producers selling their products directly to consumers at a fair price.
Their marketplace is supported by a large network of La Ruche Hosts – the passionate women and men who serve as the conduit, connecting communities of famers with consumers at local produce collection points, known by the community as ‘Ruches’ or ‘weekly Assemblies’. La Ruche has established itself as the connection point between over 10,000 producers, 1,000 active assemblies and 200,000 customers.
La Ruche Qui Dit Oui has developed an entire range of complementary distribution channels, both online and offline, across Europe. This has expanded the reach and recurring revenue farmers can secure, through the platform and increased access for consumers to trusted, healthy and local food.

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I’ve worked with many VC funds since I launched my first start-up in 1999. Astanor’s team has brought me the most added value. A pragmatic and innovative team, they’re supportive and fully engaged.

The direct connection between farm and fork means higher quality food and a decrease in greenhouse gas emissions, as their supply chain is shorter and faster than large-scale retailers. The average distance travelled by produce sold at a La Ruche marketplace is less than 50km, ensuring that consumers receive the best quality of products picked in the morning. At the same time, 80% of the value from that food goes back to the producer, creating an economic benefit for producers that no other marketplace has been able to match. This virtuous circle, unlocking superior value for producers and consumers, is what has led to La Ruche’s continued popularity across Europe.

La Ruche Qui Dit Oui news

“La Ruche Qui Dit Oui” Scores $9m from USV and Felix Capital for its Local Food Marketplace

Notpla

Making packaging disappear

Notpla’s seaweed-based packaging is biodegradable, edible, and highly functional.

Entrepreneurs
Pierre Paslier, Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez

Founded
2014

Partnered
2019

HQ
London, UK

Category
Connecting the Value Chain

Packaging that supports a healthy environment from creation to disposal

Single-use plastics are destroying our ocean and land ecosystems, with 8 million metric tons of plastic added to the ocean every year (Source: NOAA). At the same time, more microplastics are being absorbed into the food chain with harmful health outcomes. Plastic is also very carbon intensive to produce, emitting GHGs at every step in the production and consumption cycle, from cradle to grave. It’s time to move away from plastic and particularly single-use plastics, in our food system and beyond. The challenge to-date has been the performance, in functionality and price, of alternatives, and supportive regulatory frameworks to incentivise transition.
Europe had been a leader in supporting this transition. The Single-Use Plastics Directive includes a commitment to ban certain single-use plastic items by 2021, to achieve 90% collection of plastic bottles by 2029 and to apply the polluter-pays principle more stringently in this sector (Source: EU Plastics Directive).

With its team of material scientists, mechanical engineers and designers, Notpla has created a seaweed-based packaging material which can replace single-use plastics in a variety of formats. Created from brown seaweed, the material is biodegradable, renewable, microplastics-free and even edible. Brown seaweed itself can grow up to 1m per day, does not compete with food crops for resources, does not rely on fresh water or fertilizer to grow, actively contributes to de-acidifying the oceans and naturally captures CO2. Notpla’s material is highly functional and can be used for sauce sachets, liners for disposable takeaway food boxes, and films to replace flexible plastic bags. The company develops both the materials and the machinery to manufacture these items at scale.
With the positive impacts generated during both the production and disposal of its products, Notpla aligns with Astanor’s vision for unpolluted, naturally sustainable ocean ecosystems.

**Pierre Paslier & Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez**
Co-Founders

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Astanor’s focus on sustainability, wide reaching network in the food and agritech world and experience in scaling up green technology companies will be precious in helping us make single use plastic packaging disappear.

Notpla news

Apeel

Plant-based protection,
longer-lasting produce

Apeel works with nature to reduce food waste and create abundance for all.

Entrepreneurs
James Rogers

Founded
2012

Partnered
2020

HQ
Goleta, California, USA

Category
Connecting the Value Chain

Food Gone Good

Food waste typifies the paradoxes of our global food system, where an estimated 40% of the food grown globally is never consumed, due to supply chain inefficiencies and consumer waste, while nearly 30% of the world’s population remains malnourished and food insecure (Source: FAO). Food loss between harvest and consumption also exacerbates the climate crisis, through wasted inputs (land, water, energy, fertilizers, pesticides), energy spent fueling a supply chain that fails to deliver nutrition, and greenhouse gases emitted from wasted food itself. Apeel was established to address these issues using plant-based solutions.

Apeel developed and produces plant-based coatings for fresh produce that act as a “second peel” to minimize water and gas transfer. This technology allows produce to preserve its freshness and nutrition, fight spoilage, maintain taste and texture, and extend shelf life by two times or more that of untreated produce. These coatings are applied via Apeel’s machinery, which integrates into the supply chain. The produce is also branded with Apeel’s logo, to indicate to consumers that the fruits and vegetables they buy are fresher and longer lasting.

Apeel’s technology brings system-wide impact. As Apeel’s product is integrated across the food system, fewer resources are wasted producing uneaten food, less plastic is required for food packaging, less fuel is expended in rapid shipping, less energy is wasted on in-store refrigeration, fewer GHGs are emitted from wasted food in landfills, and more people of all income levels have access to fresh fruit and vegetables in all parts of the world.