Denmark’s Decameal raises Seed funding to turn invasive shore crabs into sustainable feed ingredients

Decameal, a Grindsted-based FoodTech company developing a patent-pending process to convert invasive shore crabs into sustainable protein and lipid ingredients for the feed industry, has raised a Seed round of funding. 

The round was raised from Delphinus Venture Capital and Rockstart, alongside strategic co-investor Aller Aqua. The amount has not been disclosed. 

“The waste of crabs is a global issue, and that is exactly what makes it a real business opportunity. If we can prove the model here in Denmark, we can roll it out to every part of the world,” said Leander Hessner, CEO and co-founder.

Founded in 2022 by Happylan Natkunarajah and Leander Hessner, Decameal creates sustainable products from crabs, for food, feed, and more. During Decameal’s first funding round, Mikkel Kongsfelt joined the team as a co-founder. 

Natkunarajah leads production development, overseeing new methods and testing. Hessner manages administration, communications, and outreach, handling interactions with partners, projects, and customers. Kongsfelt is responsible for IP, funding, legal matters, and investor relations. In November 2022, Decameal received an “Innofounder” grant from Innovationsfonden that enabled both original founders to work full-time.

According to the company, the European shore crab has expanded significantly along Nordic coastlines over the past three decades, destroying mussels, fish eggs and marine plant life. At the same time, the feed industry faces mounting pressure to find sustainable alternatives to soy and fishmeal.

Decameal claims to address this by sourcing crabs from small-scale coastal fisheries and processing them through a patent-pending extraction process. The company produces protein flour and protein concentrate for poultry, aquaculture and pet food, with chitin and chitosan extraction from the shells in development for higher-value markets.

“There is something genuinely elegant about what Decameal is doing – taking a species that has been a coastal headache for decades and turning it into something valuable. That kind of thinking is exactly what we look for,” said Max Grünwald, Investment Associate at Delphinus Venture Capital.

Last year, the EIT Food Accelerator Network startup Decameal raised a €700K pre-Seed round from private and corporate investors, alongside a €1.4 million Green Demonstration and Development grant from Innovation Fund Denmark, in collaboration with the DTU – Technical University of Denmark and Aller Aqua.

Decameal now operates a pilot production in Grindsted, where protein extraction and production take place, alongside offices and laboratories at Agro Food Park in Aarhus.

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