Maarten-Yan Wierenga is now leading corporate venturing at Dutch animal food producer Nutreco, following a period spent as interim head.
Maarten-Yan Wierenga, photo courtesy of LinkedIn
Maarten-Yan Wierenga has been promoted to head of venturing at the Dutch animal nutrition and aquafeed producer Nutreco, where he will lead its CVC activities.
This is a permanent position following his role as interim head of venturing at the company, which he has held since December 2023. He takes over from Erik Tveteraas, who left in August.
Wierenga joined the company as an investment manager for Nutreco NuFrontiers, its venturing arm, in 2020, before moving up to the position of investment director in July 2023, which he held alongside the interim role.
Before joining Nutreco, Wierenga worked for Chui Capital from 2017, a Kenyan VC firm, where he was a corporate finance advisor providing support on investments into African agribusiness companies. Before that he was an M&A manager at Amatheon Agri, a German investment company targeting Sub-Saharan African agribusiness and food companies, from 2013.
CVC arm Nufrontiers invests in startups in the food and biotech sectors. It has around 16 portfolio companies, including Viaqua Therapeutics, an Israeli company making treatments for aquaculture diseases, and Roslin a UK company working on technology for lab-grown meat production.
In April 2024, Nutreco was one of the investors in the $44m funding round for Laxey, an Icelandic salmon farming company.
