27 Jul 2023
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OneThird Raises €2.75M to Tackle the $1 Trillion Lost to Food Waste Annually
Funding will be used to scale OneThird’s AI-powered technology and operations to reach more growers, distributors and retailers worldwide and help them to accurately predict the shelf life of produce throughout the supply chain.
ENSCHEDE, The Netherlands, March 23, 2023 — OneThird, an AI-powered food tech company created to address the annual loss of one-third of all food produced due to spoilage, today announced the company has raised €2.75M euros ($3M USD) in a late-seed funding round, increasing the total amount of funding raised to date to €5.75M ($6.1M). The late seed funding was led by Dutch-based impact investor Pymwymic (an acronym for “Put Your Money Where Your Meaning Is Community”), with participation from prior investors Halma Ventures Limited, SHIFT Invest and Oost NL. OneThird will use the new funding to scale its technology and operations to expand to new markets and support fresh produce supply chains in North America and Europe as the company works to tackle the $1 trillion lost annually to worldwide food waste due to spoilage. View a short video about OneThird here.
Launched in 2019, OneThird has been quietly building its technology and carefully selecting early customers across the fresh produce supply chain. OneThird has garnered significant media attention since its debut at the 2023 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), where it was voted ‘Best of Show’ by multiple global tier one media. OneThird’s AI-powered, near-infrared scanning technology enables growers, food distributors, retailers and consumers to accurately predict the shelf life of fresh produce and minimize food waste. The technology currently supports and predicts the shelf life of tomatoes, strawberries, blueberries and avocados, and will extend to a total of ten types of produce, including grapes, bananas, mangoes and raspberries by late 2023.
The United Nations identifies food waste as a major sustainability development challenge. Up to one-third of food brought to market annually is wasted at an estimated cost of $1 trillion, and almost half of it – 40% – is fresh produce. Produce has a varying shelf life and is often transported over great distances — even though it may spoil within a matter of days. Proven to eliminate up to 25% of waste across the produce supply chain, OneThird’s technology empowers produce supply chain stakeholders with real-time information to help them make smarter decisions, such as optimizing best before codes, opting to ship locally or within a shorter trucking distance to maintain shelf-life, or choosing to divert produce that would otherwise spoil by turning it into smoothies, dry frozen products, soups and more.
“Global food waste has an enormous environmental impact; reducing global food waste can help to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions and embolden global food security. One-third of global food produced annually is lost or wasted, which is an astronomical volume given the number of people worldwide who go to bed hungry. Global food waste is both inefficient and a major social justice issue — one that is compounded across multiple touchpoints in the supply chain — from agricultural production all the way to the landfill,” said Marco Snikkers, CEO and founder of OneThird. “The latest seed funding we’ve received will allow us to accelerate the implementation of OneThird’s technology beyond our initial customer base, expand internationally and increase the impact we can create for our customers to help them generate higher ROI, and also meet their sustainability and ESG goals.”
“Increasing food security is key to supporting a growing global population,” said Sophie Pickering, Investment Manager at Pymwymic. “We’re excited by the possibilities OneThird’s technology presents in tackling the alarming quantities of global food loss across the supply chain.
