Accelerating the growth of innovative Agrifood companies

The Netherlands has a long history of successful Agrifood innovations that address major societal challenges. Even today, innovative pioneers with new technologies and ingredients play a key role in the transition towards a sustainable food system. To truly make a large-scale impact, it is important to accelerate the growth of promising companies.

Together with Foodvalley, Invest-NL has developed the Fastlane program, enabling Agrifood start-ups to increase their chances of success and thus grow more quickly. With the help of a multidisciplinary team of experts, these young companies are supported through coaching and guidance to increase their growth pace and avoid common (growth) pitfalls. In this way, participants can more easily connect the right investors to their company.

Sustainable food chain essential for transition to carbon-neutral economy

Making the transition to a carbon-neutral economy financially viable is the top priority for Invest-NL. Accelerating the transformation of the food chain by supporting young companies in successfully financing their innovative propositions plays an important role in this. It requires entrepreneurship, financial expertise, and active involvement from many different parties across the entire (food) chain. To increase the speed of this Agri-food transition, Invest-NL has already financed and/or made several companies and projects financeable.

Read more about what we do for the agrifood transition.

Partner community from the Dutch Agrifood ecosystem makes companies investor-ready

However, the step from start-up to scale-up proves to be difficult for young Agrifood companies. Yet, scaling up is necessary for a company to qualify as a supplier and/or customer in the sector as a relatively newcomer. The Fastlane partner network is therefore deliberately broad and currently includes Rabobank, Shift Invest, RVO, The Yield Lab, Future Food Fund, ISPT, Peakbridge Capital and Techleap. The network helps companies with various issues such as attracting talent, selecting the right market for (international) expansion, and various financing challenges.

In the first edition of the Fastlane programme in 2021, the transition to alternative proteins was central. In 2022, two new editions of the Fastlane programme took place. This time with a broader focus to stimulate innovation across the entire food chain. Besides the protein transition, companies active in themes such as circular food chains (regenerative agriculture and by-product applications), precision farming, and personalised nutrition could also participate. More than half of the companies attracted investors following the programme.

The participants in 2021 were Rival Foods, Willicroft, Grassa and De Nieuwe Melkboer.

Participants in 2022: Verdify, 1-2 Taste, Health Food Wall, AgXeed, Corvus Drones, Time Travelling Milkman, The Seaweed Company, Trabotyx, Invisible Foods, Spark Genetics, and Karma Kebab.

Participants in 2023 are BBLeap, Blomitec, Pixel Farming, and VitalFluid.

Participants in 2024: Vivici, Phycom, Magie Creations, AgroExact, SAIA and Fiber Foods Group.

Participants in 2025 are: Cied, Quantified, Cano-ela and Vertigo Technologies.

Register for Fastlane via the Foodvalley website.

Where Invest-NL makes the difference in this case

Foodvalley and Invest-NL share a joint ambition to accelerate the transition of the food chain. The Fastlane programme focuses on the critical phase of commercialisation and growth that is essential for Agri-food companies to qualify as a supplier and/or customer in the sector as a relatively new entrant. Invest-NL offers access through the Fastlane programme to a large partner network that assists with various issues such as attracting talent, selecting the right market for (international) expansion, and different financing challenges.