Sheffield-based startup Future Greens, which builds bioreactors to convert unavoidable food and brewery waste into heat and power, has secured £500,000 in investment.
The combination of £340,000 equity and a £160,000 government grant will be used to develop the company’s proprietary tenfold improvement to anaerobic digestion technology for its brewery customers. The funding will also enable the startup to expand their team with chemistry and biochemistry experts.
Investors include PXN Group, One Planet Capital, Baltic Ventures, Venture.Community and Lifted Ventures.
Future Greens has received more than £800,000 in funding to date and also benefits from an additional £100,000 in non-dilutive support across regional collaborations with The Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) and South Yorkshire Innovation Programme (SYIP) with the University of Sheffield.
“This funding allows us to accelerate delivery for customers already in the pipeline,” says Gabrielė Barteškaitė, co-founder and COO at Future Greens. “We’re starting with breweries, where large volumes of spent grain, yeast and wastewater create a clear opportunity to improve resilience through on-site renewable energy.”
The startup’s proprietary system transforms organic waste into renewable power up to ten times faster than conventional anaerobic digestion, reducing energy and effluent costs while enabling compact, on-site reactors for food manufacturers.
“Our experience in food production highlighted waste and energy as two major operational costs faced not only by us, but across the entire food industry,” adds David Dixon, co-founder and CEO at Future Greens. “Now, we’re on a mission to address both through our innovative waste to energy reactors.”
The founding team met at the University of Sheffield and previously built and operated a vertical farm, where waste disposal and energy costs proved to be major operational challenges. To address this, the team developed their first bioreactor in-house and quickly recognised the potential to scale this solution across the wider food industry.
