Unknown founders Edward de Jager and Hendrik Halbe invest in Kumasi Drinks through Impact Tech Ventures. Based in Amsterdam, Kumasi Drinks has created a range of 100% natural soft drinks from cocoa juice, a waste stream from the cocoa production process. 

 

 

Key to our vision for the future of food is fueling founders that are working on bold and unconventional solutions that challenge the status quo, optimally use excess streams from production and empower producers. We’re proud to share that Unknown has completed an investment in Netherlands-based Kumasi Drinks, a company that ticks all these boxes.

 

Lars Gierveld, Co-founder of Kumasi Drinks said: “Investing in an early stage startup in a market dominated by major players is a bold move. Unknown believes in our ability to change the status quo of the cocoa industry. We’re thrilled to have a professional investor with a global reach and emphasis on impact measurement like Unknown join the Kumasi movement!”

 

We’re fueling Kumasi because they think outside the bean, in a cocoa industry that for too long has gotten away with exploiting farmers and dictating the market. With the excess cocoa juice, Kumasi Drinks creates a range of 100% natural, healthy and tasty drinks out of what was previously considered waste from the cocoa production process. The cocoa industry is solely interested in the seeds of the cocoa plant (cocoa beans), which are used to make chocolate. As it turns out, the juicy fruit pulp surrounding the cocoa bean is healthy and extraordinarily tasty. It doesn’t taste like cocoa or chocolate but like a kind of mix of lychee, mango and white peach.

 

With their fresh, novel approach in a cocoa market dominated by major players, Kumasi buys its juice with its technical partner in Ghana directly from farmers. This way, the cocoa farmers receive immediate additional income – up to 30% extra per kg – from selling the pulp and juice byproducts from their cocoa production process they would have typically thrown away.

 

Unknown Group Chairman, Edward de Jager said: “We’re proud to welcome Kumasi Drinks to the Unknown portfolio. In a short amount of time, Lars, Linda and Rogier have gotten a lot of traction with Kumasi Drinks with a bold idea – that they can empower cacao farmers by creating incredible products from excess streams – and their focus and emphasis on measuring their impact”.

 

 

The Kumasi Story

 

Founded in 2021 by Lars Gierveld, Linda Klunder and Rogier Power, the seed for Kumasi Drinks was sown in 2018 when Gierveld, a TV presenter, traveled to the Ashanti region of Ghana to make a documentary about the cocoa industry (watch the English version here!). Here, he was encountered by a grim reality: most farmers are totally dependent on the sale of cocoa and they live below the poverty line. The industry is dominated by a few large players, who dictate the terms of the market. Middlemen at various levels of the supply chain ensure that the farmers get only a fraction of their profits. With the goal of flipping this status quo, Kumasi Drinks was born. They started collecting cocoa fruit juice with a group of farmers near Kumasi (which incidentally, is the capital of the Ashanti region in Ghana).

 

First hitting the shelves in January 2021, Kumasi Drinks – in less than two years – are available in over 1000 locations in The Netherlands, Germany, France, Italy and Spain. In their main base, The Netherlands, Kumasi have struck deals with the largest chain of supermarkets – Albert Heijn – and department stores – Hema to have their range of drinks on their shelves. “Retailers today are trying to make their catalog more in line with the values and mindset of their customers. Since we launched, we’ve been contacted regularly by retailers that want to put a drink that is good for you and good for the planet on their shelves”, adds Co-Founder, Rogier Power.

 

What’s Next

 

With this investment, Kumasi’s plan is to expand its audience by growing internationally and developing more products that are true to the Kumasi ethos (“We are exploding with ideas on how we can help more farmers and expand our product line”, quips Powers).

 

Kumasi will also set up a specialty drinks bar at Unknown Group’s new innovation hub ‘Titaan’ at the Binckhorst in The Hague. Opening in early 2023, Titaan will be a state-of-the-art 13,000 m² innovation hub to house startups and scale-ups that are creating a better world. A continuation of Unknown Group’s continual commitment to establish The Hague as Europe’s leading impact city, following the previous successes of Unknown’s global startup competition, Get in the Ring’s events in The Hague, as well as previous and upcoming editions of ImpactFest, Europe’s largest impact meetup.

 

Kumasi Drinks’ addition to the Unknown portfolio, follows Unknown’s 2021 investments in De Krekerij and Hargol FoodTech, both ventures in alternative proteins space and a 2016 investment in circular surplus food cargo auction platform, Saltrex.

 

This investment was done through Impact Tech Ventures, an investment fund that has received the Seed Capital facility of the Netherlands Enterprise Agency, de Rijksdienst voor Ondernemend Nederland (“RvO”). RvO is a government agency that operates under the supervision of the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy.

 

Unknown is thrilled to welcome Kumasi to the portfolio and is eager to work with their team to bring their incredible product and exponential impact to more markets worldwide.

 

Information, interview requests and rights-free images:

Kumasi Drinks | Lars Gierveld | lars@kumasi-drinks.nl 

Unknown Group | Rayhaan Imam | rayhaan@unknowngroup.com 

 

Dive deeper:

Kumasi Drinks’ venture page

THE INVESTMENT ALLOWS GASHOUDERS TO FURTHER SCALE UP THEIR PROPOSITION TO REALIZE LOCAL SUPPLY CHAINS IN THE CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY FOR SUSTAINABLE FUELS, TOGETHER WITH EXISTING BIOGAS PRODUCERS AND CONSTRUCTION SITES 

 

We’re happy to share that our founders, Edward de Jager and Hendrik Halbe have co-invested in a Dutch energy venture, Gashouders alongside Oost NL (through the ION+ fund), The East Netherlands Development Agency.

 

For every sustainable energy source, Gashouders finds the right destination. Founded in 2019 by Jelmer Kalff, Pieter Mans and Jan Willem Eising, Gashouders is the world’s first venture that has the capability to store cleaned, high pressure-biogas. Their innovative solution directly competes on price with fossil fuels, while being 100% sustainable. They are the first Dutch biogas provider and offer construction sites the most sustainable fuel currently available, as well as creating a financially viable market for biogas producers. 

 

Over 800 million liters of diesel is used at construction sites in The Netherlands every year. Gashouders ambition is that by 2025, they will replace 3 million liters of diesel per year used at these sites, with clean biogas. Gashouders’ 100% circular solution enables a sustainable fuel chain that connects both needs: from the source at the sewage treatment plant to use on the construction site.

 

The energy transition is a key domain where Unknown sees great potential to leverage the Venture Engine methodology to create rapid, tangible impact and bottom-line results. In the energy domain, we create a portfolio of companies committed to providing affordable, efficient and sustainable energy worldwide. Together with industry leaders, we select the best ventures from around the world; we invest and actively support them to bring their solutions into the market with our vast global network of leading corporates.

 

The investment in Gashouders is the third Unknown Group has made in the energy domain. In May 2021, was the investment in Europe’s largest sustainable crowdfunding platform for energy projects, Oneplanetcrowd. In September 2021, Unknown announced its shareholding in Plastic Back, who have developed a technology to break plastic down to crude oil and other valuable chemicals.

 

Gashouder Co-founder, Jan Willem Eising said: “We partnered up with Unknown Group for their experience in building successful ventures, their commercial outreach and their in-depth financial expertise. We believe that with this collaboration we can really make a huge impact for a sustainable future in The Netherlands and beyond!”.

 

Unknown Group CEO, Hendrik Halbe said: “Accelerating the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy by investing in and scaling up bold solutions like Gashouders is key to our vision for the future. We’re very excited to work with Jelmer, Pieter and Jan Willem and have big ambitions about the impact their technology will have on the energy transition, especially in making the construction industry switch from diesel to 100% sustainable biogas”.

 

Gashouder Co-founder, Jelmer Kalff said: “We partnered with Oost NL for their great environmental focus and wide network, logically and particularly in the East of the Netherlands. Oost NL is widely known for their investments in sustainable energy projects and financing in circular economy solutions.” 

 

Jeroen Gierveld, investment manager Oost NL states: “Gashouders is an investment  with high potential. The funding came from the ION+ fund, a fund specifically focusing on early phase companies with great sustainable solutions. As the biogas is used on construction sites it will significantly reduce the carbon footprint. We are convinced that the team can realize the great ambitions by leveraging the technology.”

Unknown’s founders have invested in Gashouders alongside Oost NL (through the ION+ fund) through Impact Tech Ventures, an investment fund that has received the Seed Capital facility of the Netherlands Enterprise Agency, de Rijksdienst voor Ondernemend Nederland (“RvO”). RvO is a government agency which operates under the supervision of the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy. 

 

Dive Deeper

 

Gashouders’ venture page on our website:

https://unknowngroup.com/ventures/gashouders/

 

Gashouders announced as Top 100 most Innovative by Dutch Chamber of Commerce:

https://www.rtvconnect.nl/nieuws/7561274-gashouders-bij-honderd-meest-innovatieve-bedrijven

 

Gashouders nominated for the Jan Terlouw Innovation Award 2021: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxEI19_JeEA

 

They’re leading the ‘Sustainable Fuel Chain’ project in Gelderland to pilot their solution. An interview about it:

https://www.gashouders.nl/news/interview-met-pieter-mans