In This Issue:
- Food Venture Financing Trends
- CPG Corporate Venture and Private Equity Funds
Food Venture Financing Trends
- The Local Bounti Corporation, a controlled environment agriculture (CEA) company in the vertical farming space, secured $145 million in funding from an increase in its existing credit facility and a sale-leaseback deal with a real estate investment trust.
- EV Biotech, a biotech startup that creates accelerated microbial production methods, raised €4.5 million in seed investment.
- Cauldron, a precision fermentation startup based in Australia, raised $7 million in a seed round. The company plans to use the funds to expand its demonstration plant and scale its manufacturing platform.
CPG Corporate Venture and Private Equity Fund
This week's featured accelerator is Organic Food Incubator.
- Organic Food Incubator™ (O.F.I.) is a food manufacturer and incubator based in New York. It has over 25 years of experience assisting CPG startups and restaurants.
- O.F.I. offers unique manufacturing solutions to businesses and entrepreneurs. Its facility is a commercially licensed, certified organic production space.
- Featured Companies:
- Hot Gramham
- Jersey Barnfire
- Hellgate Farms
- Pallotta Hot
Legal Advisory
Recent legislation regarding 401(k) plan compliance includes the following mandatory requirements which applies to all employers:
- Long-term, part-time employees must be allowed to defer into a 401(k) plan once they have earned at least 500 hours of service in two consecutive years. This requirement is effective January 1, 2025 but employers need to be tracking employees’ hours now.
- Most 401(k) plans established on or after December 29, 2022 must include an automatic enrollment feature and an automatic escalation feature effective January 1, 2025. Participants can opt out of the automatic enrollment and automatic escalation features but. If they do not, the employer must withhold deferral contributions from the participants’ pay pursuant to these features.
[View source.]
