In brief: Impact Bridge invests €7m in sustainable fashion brand

Impact Bridge has invested in Ecoalf, which is focused on advancing responsible textile innovation and circular design. Plus, Rival Foods raises €10m in a series B funding round to further scale production capacity | Start Foundation invests in Roetz Bikes.

Impact Bridge invests €7m in sustainable fashion brand

IB Deuda Impacto España, an Article 9 social and environmental impact debt fund managed by Impact Bridge, has invested €7m in Ecoalf, a sustainable fashion and lifestyle brand.

Ecoalf was founded in 2009 and is focused on advancing responsible textile innovation and circular design. It has developed more than 600 recycled fabrics from plastic bottles, fishing nets, used tires, and post-industrial cotton and wool. It says that over the past 15 years, it has saved more than 54 billion litres of water, reduced CO2 emissions by 12,500 tonnes and restored 50,000m² of land with regenerative cotton. Around 70 % of Ecoalf’s collections today are made from a single material to reduce textile waste and advance circularity, according to the company.

Speaking to Impact Investor, Maria Samoilova, managing partner at Impact Bridge and head of the fund, said the company had signed two impact covenants with the fund to improve its social and environmental impact.

“These include a progressive move towards an even greater mix of sustainable fibres in its garment collections and a multi-year strategic plan to measure, manage, and improve the company’s social impact across its full value chain,” she said.

Impact Bridge said the investment strengthens the fund’s exposure to the textile sector. Impact Investor previously reported on the fund’s investment into Formació i Treball, part of Moda re-, the largest clothing recycler in Spain, which runs a chain of second hand clothes shops and employs and trains socially marginalised people.

Impact investors back whole-cut plant-based meat company

Rival Foods, a Dutch producer of whole-cut plant-based meat alternatives, has secured €10m in a series B funding round.

The round was led by APG, the largest pension services provider in the Netherlands on behalf of ABP, the pension fund for Dutch government and education sector employees.  Other investors included impact investing cooperative Pymwimic and ROM Utrecht Region, a regional development agency for the Utrecht region. There was also a follow-on investment from existing shareholder PeakBridge, a global VC focused on the agrifood tech sector.

Rival Foods, which was founded in 2019 as a spin-off from Wageningen University & Research, has developed a proprietary platform that produces whole-cut meat alternative that it says closely mimic the structure, flavour and mouthfeel of animal-derived meat cuts, while being fully plant-based, clean label and minimally processed.

The company said it would use the investment to double its production capacity at its facility in Geldrop, a town near the city of Eindhoven, and further scale its proprietary manufacturing technology. The investment will also support the further optimisation of production costs to achieve competitive pricing with animal meat as well as team expansion and international growth.

Start Foundation invests in Roetz Bikes

Start Foundation, a Dutch social investor focused on the labour market, has invested €750,000 in Roetz Bikes. a sustainable bike company and social enterprise headquartered in Amsterdam.

The investment was made through Start Foundation Participatie, a fund which invests in companies contributing to a more inclusive labour market.

Roetz Bikes manufactures new bikes by re-working parts and materials, such as bicycle frames, from discarded bikes. The company, which was founded in 2011, started with recycling old individual bicycles and has since expanded to also remanufacture large bike fleets.

The Roetz Fair Factory, where the bikes are manufactured, employs men and women with poor job prospects and reskills them. The investment will be used to increase production, create 55 jobs over the next three years and train 90 people to help them into employment in the bicycle industry or elsewhere.

The company said it was also working on the development of a circular Roetz Life E-Bike to last users a lifetime. The bike is being modularly built and will be equipped with sensors for predictive maintenance, to reduce repair times and costs.