Panoramic Growth Equity (“Panoramic”), a leading equity investor in fast growing, entrepreneurial UK companies, today announced that it has invested £1.5m of growth capital into healthy snacking company Freed Foods Limited, which provides a range of premium plant based gluten-free snacks made with natural ingredients.
Founded by David Ventura and Tomas Mesa, Freed Foods brands include Mister Free’d Tortillas, a range of vegan tortilla chips with innovative flavours and carefully selected super food ingredients. Mister Free’d has gained traction in Europe, selling into major supermarkets such as Monoprix, Carrefour and Franprix. Success in Europe has led the company to recently target the UK market and products are now available across an increasing number of UK retailers including Wholefoods, Planet Organic, Budgens and WH Smith’s, with listings in further major UK retailers to be announced in the coming months.
David Ventura, Co-Founder and Director commented “the company has grown quickly in recent years, so we are delighted to complete our Series A investment which will allow us to fuel our continued expansion. We look forward to working with Panoramic who share our vision and will be great partners as we continue to build the brand.”
David Atkinson, Senior Investment Manager at Panoramic commented “David, Tomas and the team at Freed Foods have created an exciting brand which offers consumers delicious snacks containing high quality ingredients in the growing ‘free-from’ and vegan categories. Freed Foods has done an excellent job of bringing their products to supermarket shelves across Europe and the UK in a short space of time. We share a vision that the snacking market will continue to evolve towards a wider variety of healthy, free from products reflecting changing consumer tastes towards healthier lifestyles”.
Panoramic’s investment will support Freed Foods continued growth in the UK and French markets with investment in sales & marketing, new product development and building the team as the company continues to scale. David Atkinson will join the Freed Foods Board as part of this transaction.
The investment marks Panoramic’s ninth investment of Fund 2.
Panoramic’s investment into Freed Foods was led by David Atkinson. Panoramic were advised by Stephen Bowman of lawyers WLG Gowling, David Holt of Consilium Chartered Accountants and Mark McDavid and Stewart Russell who provided commercial diligence.