Deals this week: Gousto, Fraser & Neave, Emmi

Gousto has secured £18m ($22.9m) through an equity funding round, which involved participation from Unilever, Hargreave Hale, BGF Ventures, MMC Ventures, Angel CoFund and global health influencer Joe Wicks.

Gousto raised £28.5m ($36.2m) in 2018, while the latest round brings the total funding to £75m ($95.4m).

Based in the UK, Gousto is a cook-at-home meal kit service company, which delivers more than 1.5 million meals a month.

The company intends to use the funds for investments in tech innovation to grow its business. It also plans to serve 400 million nutritious home-cooked meals to UK households by 2025.

Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) in collaboration with Fraser & Neave (F&N) has opened a laboratory for developing food and beverage products in Singapore.

The partnership allows 30 researchers and students to jointly work at the F&N-NTU F&B Innovation Lab to convert food technology innovations into industry applications for the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) segment.

The researchers at the lab will improve food products, as well as processes and create biodegradable packaging solutions for the food and beverage (F&B) industry.

The collaboration will also focus on other research projects, including product freshness and environment-friendly packaging solutions.

Emmi has acquired Great Lakes Cheese Company’s production site in Seymour, Wisconsin, for an undisclosed amount.

Based in Switzerland, Emmi is a milk processor and dairy products company.

The US business operates as Emmi Roth and offers locally-produced cheese and exported cheeses from Switzerland. It currently offers buttermilk blue cheese available in original, smoked and affinée varieties.

Commissioned in 2005, the Seymour plant is equipped to crumble blue cheese and pack it into cups.

The transaction enables Emmi to increase its blue cheese production capacity in the US and create new varieties of blue cheese.

Tauriga Sciences has entered a manufacturing agreement with a gum manufacturer in Maryland for producing a Cannabis/CBD chewing gum product line (CBD Gum).

Based in the US, Tauriga Sciences is involved in the development, distribution and licensing of proprietary products.

Tauriga has paid a major portion of the costs involved in the production of an initial batch of 8,700 units. Each unit will have eight pieces of CBD gum with 10mg of CBD Isolate.

The CBD content, THC content (0%) and microbiology in every batch of the gum will be tested by a third party.

Giorgio Fresh Co has agreed to acquire certain assets and operations of Country Fresh Mushrooms.

The agreement will include the packing operations of Country Fresh in Arizona and Pennsylvania, as well as its mushroom distribution and sales operations.

Founded in 1928, Giorgio Fresh grows and ships fresh mushrooms, while Country Fresh is a producer and supplier of mushrooms and mushroom products.

Both companies involved in the transaction are based in the US.