The International Foodtech Center at the new Margalit Start-Up City Galil in Kiryat Shmona opened Thursday with high expectations.
“Foodtech is the next cyber, and I believe Israel is on its way to becoming a superpower in the field,” said Erel Margalit, the complex’s creator and founder and chair of the venture capital firm JVP. “We are creating an economic growth engine which will change the lives of young people and families, with 30,000 high-paying technology jobs in the center of the country, and another 70,000 ancillary positions.”
The Margalit Startup City Galil with Jewish National Fund - USA will address the burning problems of the world, including global warming, hunger, drought, and a shortage of healthy food, the organization said.
The launch event was attended by senior ministers, ambassadors, diplomats, business leaders and the Israeli hi-tech and research community, together with the Galilee leadership. The event included a food innovation festival, with tastings from top foodtech and agritech companies. Local schools also presented their innovation projects.
This is Margalit’s fourth innovation center (Start-Up City), joining cyber centers in New York, Beersheba, Jerusalem. Margalit also has planned centers opening up in Paris and Dubai. JVP is the first venture capital fund to invest so heavily in the Galilee region, the fund said.
Margalit explained his strong connection to the region. “I was 10 years old when my family came to live in the Galilee,” he said. “My father, Itzik Margalit, established the first community center in Carmiel. My mother, Miki Margalit, was a teacher and educator of the first cohort at the city’s high school.
“It is a moving closing of the circle to be here today and to see my parents’ family name displayed above the innovation center, which represents all the values I was raised on, and which shaped me,” he added.
In recent years, Margalit has worked to promote entrepreneurship, mathematics, English and innovation in schools in the Galilee and Kiryat Shmona. Now there is a plan to integrate all the schools in the area for a unique program in collaboration with the Education Ministry for start-ups, entrepreneurship, innovation and foodtech. This will already begin during the new school year.
The International Foodtech Center in the Galilee operates in strategic cooperation with a host of ecosystem players, public bodies and corporations, including the Kiryat Shmona Municipality, Upper Galilee Regional Council, and the Galilee Development Company; and local and international business and technological bodies that are opening a branch the Galilee for the first time, including JVP, Cisco, Deloitte, Luzzatto Group, Bank Hapoalim, and Fischer & Fischer Law Firm.
Partners also include local academic bodies Migal Research Institute and Tel Hai Academic College; local and international philanthropic foundations such as Jewish National Fund - USA, Rothschild Foundation, Foundation Ica and Keren Hayesod France; as well as technology companies Solato, WITI, Grasshopper, Digital Valley, and the program at Digital Valley – Galil Studio.
The organization noted that it was made possible thanks to a strong partnership with Jewish National Fund - USA, and the strong support of Laureine and David Greenbaum, and the Horwitz-Zusman Family.
Russell Robinson, CEO of Jewish National Fund - USA said in the opening event: “From this day forward Kiryat Shemona should never be called a development town, no, Kiryat Shemona and the Greater area of the Upper Eastern Galilee is part of the Culinary and Food industry capital of Israel. As we walked down the street with Erel Margalit and leadership and mayors of the area we knew, this is no longer a dream, this is the reality”.