The round was led by a diversified agricultural family office, Evans Properties, The Jeremy and Hannelore Grantham Environmental Trust, and a group of Florida agricultural family offices, who join existing investors including the Elemental Excelerator, the Yield Lab, Astia Angels, Allotrope Ventures and Howard Fischer of Gratitude Railroad.
The company intends to use the new funds to accelerate research connecting the pongamia bean’s valuable functional properties to critical processing and product development partnerships that will demonstrate commercial viability of pongamia protein and oil and grow its infrastructure to supply farmers with patented high-yielding oilseed trees in Florida and Hawaii.
TerViva is an agriculture technology company commercializing resilient pongamia trees that produce as much as ten times the beans per acre as soy for the supply of plant protein, vegetable oil, and biofuel.
The company sells farmers patented non-GMO cultivars of pongamia selected for their high yields and hardy growth. Farmers partner with TerViva to grow pongamia on abandoned agriculture lands with little to no fertilizers or pesticides. The company buys back the crop for processing into plant protein, livestock feed, and high-oleic oil.
TerViva is planting patented varieties of the pongamia tree in Florida and in Hawaii, on former sugar cane lands on Oahu, Kauai, and Maui.
FinSMEs
26/03/2019