Hooked Foods' plant-based tuna and salmon are available at supermarkets in Sweden © Marilia Bognandi
Hooked Foods is set to close its latest round in October as it expedites its expansion from Sweden across European markets in 2023. The company got its start in 2019 after emerging from the ProVeg Incubator. According to reporting in Vegconomist, Hooked is hoping to lead the plant-based seafood cohort in Europe and combat many of the recurring pain points of the seafood industry.
Hooked Foods has successfully entered the Swedish market with its Toonish and Salmoonish line of alt-seafood. The products are available at 76 percent of Swedish retailers. The new capital will be used to launch these lines into other European markets in 2023, including the UK, Germany and Benelux countries.
Before its recent funding round, Hooked Foods raised €4.2 million from a group of impact investors, including Oyster Bay VC, Veg Capital, Katapult Ocean, ProVeg, Kale United and Brightly Ventures.
In March 2022, the startup made a strategic partnership with AFRY, a Swedish-Finnish consulting and engineering supplier, to break ground on a production facility for plant-based seafood before the end of 2023. AFRY will advise Hooked Foods and provide support in its efforts to develop a pilot plant in Sweden and begin its expansion across Europe.
“I am very happy to have seen the development we have had in Sweden. It is not easy to be the first movers building a new category such as plant-based seafood, but we have experimented, dared to try, fail fast and found a way to activate our products and the category in an effective way with our customers.
“Now we have a top performing rotation in line with much bigger and more established brands such as Quorn and Oumph! in Sweden and we are now ready to bring our products to more markets,” says Tom Johansson, CEO of Hooked Foods.
