An idea spawned by the Scanian-based company AVENTURE has attracted investments in the SEK million range. United Pancakes, the new company introducing prepackaged pancake batter, is now being set up.

United Pancakes has just received ca ten million SEK from financial angels, Innovationsbron (the Innovation Bridge) and Almi. The investors include Readsoft CEO Jan Andersson and the entrepreneur Christain Witt. United Pancakes is a spin-off of Aventure, the Oatly research company.

The first prepackaged pancake batter is just being launched. Like other Oatly products, it is based on oat milk, but an expansion of the assortment is one of the purposes of the spin-off.

“Under Oatly’s brand name we can only develop products that contain no milk, wheat gluten or soy. We see prepackaged pancake batter as a convenience concept that can be developed into several different varieties,” says Mats-Ola Kindstedt, CEO of United Pancakes and former CEO of Oatly.

The batter is produced and packaged in the premises of Danish Fipros at Kågeröd, where a handful of jobs have been created from the very start.

“We believe that this concept will sell like, well, hotcakes! And we figure on employing ten to fifteen people in a few years’ time,” says Mats-Ola Kindstedt.

About half of the ten million SEK available to the company at present are loans and the other half investments.

“That will suffice for the coming year, but we may need fresh, new money depending on our expansion and further development,” says Mats-Ola Kindstedt.

Aventure and Innovationsbron will be the principal owners of the new company. Per Heander, in charge of investments, won’t reveal how much state-owned Innovationsbron has invested, but says that it’s one of the major investments of their Skåne-based section this year.

Sydsvenskan, 18/9/2010