CANADA: CEA Supplier Sustainitech Finds Capital Partner
FullCycle Climate Partners just announced their investment in Sustainitech, a controlled environment agriculture company based in Toronto. Sustainitech's energy-efficient indoor farming system uses HIFI (High Intensity Farming Indoor) containers that realize increased crop density over industry-standard greenhouses and hydroponic vertical farms. "Their technology consumes less electricity per unit of agricultural produce to achieve high crop yields at industry leading prices," they say.
"Sustainitech is an indoor farming technology developer focused on growing environments that are competitive to modern greenhouse farming. Their horizontal farming complex is designed to enable flexible and crop agnostic farming, creating the ability to grow high value produce up to 6ft tall, not possible in vertical farming," they say.
"With climate change's long-term impact on crop yield, this investment is particularly well-timed, given the new US administration's focus on infrastructure solutions to address climate change. Secular growth and political priorities are expected to have valuable implications for low-carbon technologies like Sustainitech and others in the FullCycle portfolio," they explain.
In a move expected to spur further development into the carbon-neutral economy, President-Elect Biden appointed John Kerry to lead the Presidential Envoy for Climate, and his $2 trillion clean energy investment package totals 20x the clean-energy spending in Mr. Obama's 2009 economic-recovery package.
"Climate change is a threat to global food security. The innovations pioneered at Sustainitech will allow communities to count on access to a wide variety of fresh, low-cost, and nutritious produce while reducing the climate impact from their food supply chain. We see Sustainitech playing a pivotal role in growing a wide range of crops in any climate at industry-leading costs and best in class energy usage," FullCycle Founder and Managing Partner, Ibrahim AlHusseini said in a statement announcing the investment.
Sustainitech fits well within the FullCycle portfolio. Their unit economics exceed FullCycle's IRR thresholds, and their Carbon-Return-on-Investment (CROI20) of Short-Lived Climate Pollutants (SLCP's) meets FullCycle's requirement of gigaton level carbon abatement. With this investment, FullCycle acquired substantial equity as well as exclusive rights to invest in the roll-out of Sustainitech's projects worldwide.
"As the demand for building larger facilities grows, we needed to find the right capital partner to scale us from the present through to a high growth future. Only FullCycle offers the right instruments, tools, and values to allow us to chart a path to a multi-billion-dollar horizon while keeping our focus on a sustainable future," said Sustainitech CEO Joey Hundert.
FullCycle also announced the appointment of Ann M. Veneman to their Board of Advisors. Previously Veneman was the United States Secretary of Agriculture, the first and only woman to hold that position to date. "I have spent much of my career in agriculture, and look forward to identifying promising and sustainable climate-friendly solutions," said former US Secretary of Agriculture Ann M. Veneman.
26 Nov 2020