Social enterprise brewery Toast Ale has raised more than £2m to grow the positive impact of its business, with investors including Heineken and former Unilever boss Paul Polman.
The investment will be used to scale the brewery’s work with bakeries to prevent more bread from going to waste.
Funds will support the continued growth of Toast’s beer business and will also be used for research and development to help more bakeries to prevent waste, and enable more breweries to use surplus bread to reduce the environmental footprint of their beers.
Since the business began in 2016, Toast has upcycled 2.9 million slices of surplus bread, working with a small number of bakeries and sandwich manufacturers in the UK.
It has also collaborated with 86 breweries since it launched, supporting them to use surplus bread in their brewing.
However, Toast said the industry had “not yet fully embraced the circular economy” due to challenges such as the food safe sourcing and effective processing of bread, and the efficient use of bread in the brewhouse.
The business added it had overcome these challenges and was now able to “elevate its support for the industry”.
The £2m investment will enable Toast to significantly scale its impact, towards a goal of rescuing one-billion slices of surplus bread.
Toast will work with Heineken as a strategic investor, focusing on research and development, as part of the Dutch brewer’s net-zero strategy.
Louisa Ziane, co-founder and chief operating officer at Toast Ale, said: “We set out with a mission to brew great beers and spread big ideas that can change the world, and are proud of the positive impact we have.
“Collaboration has always been key to our strategy for achieving change, and we’re excited to be able to scale our work to support bakeries and breweries to embrace the circular economy.”
Investors in the round include the National Geographic Society, the impact-driven non-profit that has supported Toast since its seed round in 2018, Heineken International, which has its own net-zero goals, and Paul Polman, who works to accelerate action by business to tackle climate change and inequality.
All investors have committed to Toast’s ‘Equity for Good’ investment model. It requires shareholders to reinvest any capital gains on selling the shares into social impact businesses and funds. Investors also do not receive dividends, as all Toast’s distributable profits go to charity.
Magne Setnes, chief supply chain officer at Heineken, added: “We have an ambition to reach net-zero carbon emissions in our production by 2030 and our full value chain by 2040.
“We believe achieving these ambitions requires working in partnerships that can scale innovation and research to develop best practices.
“We are delighted to collaborate with Toast, it is through our collective effort that we can achieve our shared goals, scaling our positive contribution and limiting our negative impacts on the environment. Like Toast, our ambition is to maximise the circulatory of all our products, in other words move from take-make-waste to reduce-reuse-recycle.”
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