Forward Fooding, a center dedicated to innovative companies in the food sector born in London in 2018, has opened a permanent headquarters in Barcelona with the aim of being an actor that contributes to "accelerating the revolution of the food system with an international perspective." According to the founder and CEO of Forward Fooding and the new Food & Food Tech Innovation Hub Barcelona, Alessio D'Antino, "in the last three years, the Spanish foodtech ecosystem has grown at double digits and has created startups that have developed leading technologies" that they now want to help project internationally.
Precisely, Impact Fooding, a newly created fund led by some of Forward Fooding's partners, has led the new Series A financing round for 16 million euros that one of these innovative Catalan companies, Foods for Tomorrow, owner of the plant-based protein food brand Heura, has just closed. The meat startup that is not meat, founded by Marc Coloma and Bernat Añaños, closed 2020 with a turnover of 8 million euros and recently already raised 4 million of these 16 million euros through a crowdfunding platform in which football players such as Saúl Ñíguez, Sergi Roberto, Cesc Fàbregas participated.
Forward Fooding presents itself as a collaborative platform for new food companies based in London and which will now have its European headquarters in Barcelona and a satellite office in Rome. The Food & Food Tech Innovation Hub in the Catalan capital has established its base on the Talent Garden campus in the 22@ district and in a first phase will host nine startups. In addition to Heura, the hub is linked to other foodtech companies such as Novameat, Swearit, Robin Good, and Ethics Coffee.
To introduce itself to society, the platform plans to hold its official inauguration event on July 1, which will be accompanied by a conference to publicize the business opportunities offered by the so-called Mediterranean FoodTech. "Forward Fooding is the ideal destination for innovators, entrepreneurs, and corporations who want to boost their development in the sector over the next few years through collaboration," says D'Antino. According to the entrepreneur, the Forward Fooding ecosystem already connects 12,000 actors in the foodtech field worldwide and plans to raise this figure to 15,000 by 2023.
According to Forward Fooding, Barcelona has been chosen for the opening of its second headquarters in Europe "for being the third city in the world in attracting talent and occupying the fourth position in the ranking of the 10 largest technological hubs in the EU". "We are talking about one of the most powerful technological hubs at European and global level," they underline.