OAKLAND, Calif., March 26, 2019 /PRNewswire/
-- TerViva, an agriculture technology firm
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 raised an additional
$20 million in its first close of its
Series D funding and current commitments. This latest round of
investment 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. New funds will allow TerViva 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. These funds will also grow TerViva's
infrastructure to supply farmers with the company's patented
high-yielding oilseed trees in Florida and Hawaii.
TerViva 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. TerViva buys back the crop for processing into plant
protein, livestock feed, and high-oleic oil. By cultivating high
seed-producing trees and successfully removing compounds impacting
taste, TerViva is the first company to make the ancient pongamia
tree's protein and vegetable oil yields accessible for food
applications.
"Consumption of plant-based proteins and oils is growing
rapidly, but the amount of arable land to grow these crops is
increasingly limited," says Naveen
Sikka, founder and CEO of TerViva. "We've developed a
sustainable, market-driven approach for farmers to profit off
marginal land by cultivating trees that can feed the planet. We
look forward to building partnerships that will incorporate our
supply of highly-sustainable pongamia protein and oil as food and
feed ingredients."
TerViva is planting patented varieties of the pongamia tree in
Florida, where the citrus industry
has dramatically shrunk and few alternative crops have emerged, and
in Hawaii, on former sugar cane
lands on Oahu, Kauai, and Maui, which saw the state's last sugar cane
harvest in 2016. TerViva has 150,000 trees under contract with
existing customers that include several of the largest citrus
farmers in Florida and will use
funding to deliver an additional 200,000 trees in the coming two
years. Growers and local communities will benefit from a
sustainable plant protein with a dramatically lower carbon
footprint, and greater resilience to extreme storms, flooding,
drought, and heat than annual plant proteins.
The pongamia tree produces a legume that is related to beans,
peas and lentils and has been harvested for mostly medicinal uses
for more than 1,000 years. As a plant protein, pongamia has
excellent potential as a replacement for soy. Pongamia protein has
strong gelling and emulsification properties and pongamia vegetable
oil is similar to high-oleic acid vegetable oils. TerViva has
conducted studies utilizing pongamia protein as an animal feed
ingredient with poultry and cows, with promising results emerging
as it prepares for regulatory submissions with the US Food and Drug
Administration (FDA).
TerViva's funding round has enabled the firm to bring on new
leaders in sustainability, growth, and food and feed
commercialization, including Jim
Astwood, PhD., Agricultural Food and Science, Certified Food
Scientist, formerly VP of Scientifics and Government Affairs at
Martek (DSM), VP of Global Nutrition at ConAgra Foods, and Science
Fellow and Director of Food Regulatory Affairs at Monsanto; and
Marc Diaz, who has led impact
investing for NatureVest at The Nature Conservancy and UNICEF
Bridge Fund, a 2017 Aspen Institute Finance Leaders Fellow, member
of the Aspen Global Leadership Network, and former management
consultant at McKinsey & Company.
TerViva's board chairman is Ron
Edwards, president and CEO of Evans Properties, Inc., former
COO of Tropicana, co-founder of SoBe Beverages and Blue Buffalo Pet
Food. He observes that, "TerViva will invest this Series D
fundraising support alongside Florida's citrus growers eager to revitalize
fallow acreage and scale-up a sustainable, transparent oilseed
supply chain. This will unlock numerous applications of the
company's intellectual property growing high-performing trees and
processing beans in to nutritious food and feed products to meet a
broad range of needs."
ABOUT TERVIVA
Formed in 2010, TerViva is a Series-D
agricultural technology company that produces pongamia trees with
abundant oil and protein-rich beans, similar to soybeans. We
provide patented high-yielding trees and offer proprietary bean
processing to create sustainable food and fuel. TerViva uses
pongamia to restore farmland to productive use, helping farmers
feed people while taking care of the planet. Learn more at
TerViva.com.
For more information: Justin
Wilson, justin.wilson@terviva.com
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SOURCE TerViva