Participated · Seed · Aug 2023

Konscious Foods is a plant-based seafood brand that makes frozen sushi rolls, onigiri stuffed rice snacks, poke bowls and other plant-based seafood products for retail and foodservice. Launched in 2023 by chef and plant-based pioneer Yves Potvin, the company sells in fine retailers across the U.S. and Canada, including all Whole Foods Market locations, and expects placement in over 4,500 stores nationwide by year-end. Its recipes are Non-GMO Project verified, gluten-free, 100% plant-based, organic where possible, and free from carrageenan and titanium dioxide. The company operates a production facility in Vancouver, British Columbia, which the financing will help support. Konscious positions its products as sustainable seafood alternatives that preserve taste and texture while addressing overfishing. The funds will also be used to grow retail and foodservice businesses and deploy nationwide marketing initiatives.

Participated · Seed · Feb 2023

NS/TX Industries (doing business as NEW/SCHOOL FOODS) operates a vertically integrated manufacturing platform built around a proprietary, tuneable scaffolding and texturization technology for meat and seafood analogues. The platform supports production of whole-cut formats (steaks, filets), non whole-cut formats (burgers, strips), and a wide range of species analogues with tuneable texture, flavor delivery systems, and cleaner-label nutrition. The company operates a 28,000 sq. ft. facility in Toronto and launched a V1 commercial assembly line in late 2024, achieving more than a 10x reduction in production costs through extensive trials, equipment upgrades, digital QA, and process breakthroughs. Those developments generated new patents and proprietary equipment designs. NS/TX provides production, R&D, and co-manufacturing services and delivers consumer- and restaurant-facing products via its NEW/SCHOOL FOODS brand. The company has raised over $30 million USD in private and government funding and is now scaling via construction of an automated V2 Assembly Line to increase capacity by over 10x and further lower costs.

Participated · Grant · Apr 2020

Provision Analytics offers a SaaS platform that simplifies food safety audits and analytics by capturing process data with dynamic digital forms featuring translation, autofill, and error checks. The software automates inventory and supplier management and streams each client's data into a central cloud for real-time process analytics and faster audit completion. Customizable record templates include automatic schedules, rules, and alerts to aid process control and to unlock custom analytics for intelligent process control. The company was founded in Copenhagen, built in Calgary, and graduated from Maersk FoodTrack in 2018; it has been described as one of Canada’s fastest-growing tech companies. Provision currently employs around 25 people and plans to use new funding to accelerate product development and expand sales. The startup intends to grow its workforce by about 50 percent over the next year. Provision Analytics develops OneTrace, a food safety and traceability software platform that uses a graph database and machine learning to correlate food-supply data and limit the scope and cost of recalls. Its product includes a custom form builder for capturing operational data such as employee temperatures and symptoms to track who touched what. The company completed two pilots in spring and signed its first enterprise clients in August, then sold aggressively through Q4 2019. Management says the platform is focused on fresh produce and grains given the company’s regional strengths. Provision positions its offering as a faster, lower-cost alternative to blockchain for traceability and aims to become the QuickBooks for food safety for companies with under $500 million in revenue. The company raised funding to build out its digital tool and expand its analytics capabilities.

Led · Equity · Jun 2019

Botaneco commercializes an innovative oilseed processing technology platform that isolates highly functional natural ingredients from oilseeds for the food, feed, and personal care markets. Its proprietary separation and purification techniques recover high-quality oleosomes and proteins in their natural state. The process creates an adjacent high-value space to the existing oilseed processing industry, enabling participation in product areas where the industry historically had limited involvement. Botaneco plans to expand processing research, food and feed application innovations, and market development to capture new value for Canadian agriculture. Company leadership says the new funding will accelerate its innovation strategy and allow it to reimagine conventional oilseed processing. The company is based in Calgary, Alberta.