Sheffield food-waste-to-energy start-up Future Greens raises £500,000

Future Greens, a Sheffield start-up building bioreactors that convert food and brewery waste that cannot be avoided into heat and power, has secured £500,000 of new funding.

The round is made up of £340,000 in equity and a £160,000 UK Government grant. The money will go towards developing its proprietary technology, which it says improves anaerobic digestion tenfold, for brewery customers already lined up, and towards hiring chemistry and biochemistry specialists.

Investors include PXN Group, One Planet Capital, Baltic Ventures, Venture.Community and Lifted Ventures.

Future Greens has now raised more than £800,000 in total. It also has a further £100,000 of non-dilutive support through regional partnerships with the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) and the South Yorkshire Innovation Programme (SYIP) with the University of Sheffield.

The company’s system turns organic waste into renewable energy as much as ten times quicker than standard anaerobic digestion, cutting energy and effluent costs and allowing food manufacturers to run compact reactors on site.

David Dixon, co-founder and chief executive, said: “Our experience in food production highlighted waste and energy as two major operational costs faced not only by us, but across the entire food industry. Now, we’re on a mission to address both through our innovative waste to energy reactors.”

Gabrielė Barteškaitė, co-founder and chief operating officer, said: “This funding allows us to accelerate delivery for customers already in the pipeline. We’re starting with breweries, where large volumes of spent grain, yeast, and wastewater create a clear opportunity to improve resilience through on-site renewable energy.”

Helen Oldham, co-founder of Lifted Ventures, said: “The team at Future Greens exemplifies the innovation and determination that Lifted Ventures angel investors look to add to their portfolios. Their approach to sustainable energy generation is both practical and scalable, and we are proud to be part of their journey.”

The founders, who met at the University of Sheffield, used to run a vertical farm where the cost of energy and getting rid of waste were major problems. They built their first bioreactor in-house to tackle this and soon saw that it could be used across the food industry.

The modular, AI-driven digesters turn organic waste into biogas, reducing trade effluent and disposal costs, cutting CO₂ emissions and making operations more resilient. The first system is due to be installed at a brewery in 2026.