Heura Foods has closed a Series B financing round for an amount of 40 million euros which it will use to advance its growth plan within the plant protein business and to become profitable as soon as possible. The operation has been led by Upfield, a Dutch multinational leader in the production of vegetable margarine and owner of the Flora, Tulipán, and ProActive brands. This company emerged in 2018, after the Unilever group decided to sell this business area to the KKR fund for nearly 7 billion euros.
In addition to Upfield, Unovis Asset Management, European Circular Bioeconomy Fund (ECBF VC), and Newtree Impact participated in the round. "This strategic coalition forms one of the largest plant-based alliances, establishing a board of directors that will focus on developing cutting-edge technologies to implement new standards in the industry and enable Heura to boost its impact in the food industry, accelerate its international expansion, and explore new collaboration models beyond its own branded meat alternatives," the company highlighted.
According to Heura, this is the largest fundraising achieved by a startup in the alternative protein sector in the last year. "This achievement elevates Heura's vision of being at the forefront of the protein transition in Europe," highlighted Marc Coloma, CEO and co-founder of Heura Foods alongside Bernat Añaños. "This new chapter ---adds the entrepreneur--- will lead us to profitability and, at the same time, allow us to develop innovative technologies to address key challenges within the industry in a scalable way."
Founded in Barcelona in 2017, Heura leads the growth in Spain of the meat-mimicking food category. Its products, alternatives to chicken, beef, pork, and fish, are already sold in 22,000 points of sale in a total of 20 countries, among which the United Kingdom, France, and Italy also stand out. In 2022, the latest known data, Heura invoiced 31.4 million euros, a 77% increase.
In April of last year, the company presented its first patent, a new food processing technology that it claimed to be a global pioneer, as it broke "the rules of the game" of what was previously possible in the sector by allowing the imitation of meat products such as cooked ham or Frankfurt sausages with vegetable protein without using additives.