OneThird announced it has raised $3 million in funding. These are the details.
OneThird – an AI-powered food tech company created to address the annual loss of one-third of all food produced due to spoilage – announced it has raised $3 million in funding (2.75M euros) in a late-seed funding round, increasing the total amount of funding raised to date to $6.1 million (5.75M euros). This late seed funding was led by 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 plans to 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 on addressing the $1 trillion lost annually to worldwide food waste due to spoilage.
Founded in 2019, OneThird has been quietly building out its technology and carefully selecting early customers across the fresh produce supply chain. And OneThird gained significant media attention since its debut at the 2023 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) where the company was voted ‘Best of Show’ by multiple global tier-one media.
OneThird’s AI-powered and near-infrared scanning technology enables growers, food distributors, retailers, and consumers to accurately predict the shelf life of fresh produce and minimize food waste. And 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 UN identifies food waste as a major sustainable development challenge. And up to one-third of food brought to market annually is wasted at an estimated cost of $1 trillion and nearly half of it (40%) is fresh produce. Produce is known for having a varying shelf life and is often transported over great distances even though it could 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 in order to help them make smarter decisions like 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.
Below is a video explaining how the company works:
KEY QUOTES:
“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. 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.”
— Marco Snikkers, CEO and founder of OneThird
“Increasing food security is key to supporting a growing global population. We’re excited by the possibilities OneThird’s technology presents in tackling the alarming quantities of global food loss across the supply chain.”
— Sophie Pickering, Investment Manager at Pymwymic
