AN APPETITE FOR INVESTMENT
The Redesdale Food & Beverage Fund was launched in December 2021 with the stated aim of providing seed and early-stage capital to Irish food entrepreneurs. Its first close was €27m, with Enterprise Ireland committing €15m from its Seed & Venture Capital programme. The fund’s private backers include Musgrave Group and Monaghan Mushrooms, with US asset manager Lord Abbett, CocaCola and Tate & Lyle also involved.
As well as John Conroy and John Stapleton, the Redesdale team includes Michael Cantwell, former head of food in Enterprise Ireland, and investor Owen Murphy. Business luminaries associated with the fund are Niall FitzGerald, the former Unilever boss, and successful Irish executives Stan McCarthy and Sean O’Driscoll.
In 2022, Redesdale made two investments, Soothing Solutions and Thanks Plants. In 2023, the fund has provided rescue funding for Fiid, the plant-based ready-meals maker, and invested in Kwayga, a supplier sourcing engine for supermarket buyers.
John Conroy makes no apologies for the leisurely pace of investment announcements. “We deliberately took a cautious view, and I think it has served us pretty well,” says Conroy. “We saw very clearly that the Ukraine war and the cost of living crisis were having a significant impact on the type of company that we were interested in. The decision to buy more disruptive or alternative food gets parked for a while when the purse strings are stretched.”
John Conroy (right) at the launch of the Redesdale Food & Beverage Fund with Leo Varadkar, Nicola Nic Phaidin of Enterprise Ireland, and Coca-Cola country manager Agnese Filippi
Conroy adds: “We are not your typical VC fund. We received money from Enterprise Ireland and we weren’t going to be rushed into throwing it around willy-nilly. We congratulate ourselves for having world-class food companies in Ireland, but we haven’t had too many new ones in the past 25 years. We have very strong food science in Ireland but very little of what it has discovered has been commercialised. That was really a calling card to me.”
One area of interest for Redesdale is the microbiome, particularly the bacteria of the gut. “One of our advisers is Prof. Fergus Shanahan, who is a world authority on this area,” Conroy explains. “Ireland is an outstanding centre for microbiome research, and few commercial projects have emerged so far.”
So what sort of products is Redesdale looking for? Food and beverages that can use microbiome formulations is his answer. “That can be plain shelf food or supplements,” he explains. “It could also bring us into the area of female health.”
If he could go back in time, what innovative food products would Conroy have invested in? “I don’t think we’ve seen enough of the food revolution yet to be able to pin my colours to that particular mast. Two years ago, I probably would have said Impossible Meats, or Beyond Meat, but those companies were complacent in assuming that the market would just buy the alternatives.
“There is no major new blockbuster food out there that we missed out on. The ones that we thought we did miss have since come under the microscope. The area of probiotics is one area that has successfully stood the test of time. A lot of the newer stuff hasn’t even been tested yet.”