BrightFarms, a leading commercial rooftop hydroponic greenhouse developer, raised $13.6 million in Series B-1 venture capital funding last November from WP Global Partners, NGEN Partners and Emil Capital Partners.
The company also raised $4.9 million in Series B venture capital financing in early 2014; investors included NGEN, Emil Capital Partners, BrightFarms founder Ted Caplow, Paragon Foods president Elaine Bellin, New Ground Ventures founding principal Zac Zeitlin, and Coskata founder Todd Kimmel, a former partner at Mayfield Fund who is now a founding principal at Montage Ventures.
BrightFarms designs, finances, builds and operates its hydroponic greenhouses at or near supermarkets and other retailers. This virtually eliminates time, distance and cost from the food supply chain. Retailers have shown strong demand for such a service, and the newly raised capital enables BrightFarms to build commercial-scale greenhouses that provide locally grown, tastier, fresher and long-lasting produce. It has raised a total of $25.3 million in financing to date.
BrightFarms also raised project finance capital from Clean Feet Investors and Prudential to build a greenhouse farm in Culpeper County, Virginia. It began operation in October and is supplying produce for Ahold supermarkets in the Virginia, Maryland, DC and Delaware areas.
The company has developed an innovative financing technique called produce purchase agreement (PPA) financing that securitizes its long-term fixed-price food supply contracts with supermarkets. This enables BrightFarms to attract project financing to construct greenhouse farms on behalf of its supermarket clients.
Among BrightFarms’ facilities in operation and under development:
– A greenhouse in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, which cost $2 million to build and now yields 500,000 pounds of produce per year. BrightFarms partnered with McCaffrey’s Market for the 56,000-square-foot greenhouse.
– The BrightFarms Capitol Greenhouse in northern Virginia was announced in October, with financing from Prudential Insurance and Clean Feet Investors; construction was expected to be done by the end of 2015. The greenhouse will grow produce exclusively for Ahold in Virginia, Maryland, D.C. and Delaware. Ahold runs supermarkets under the Giant, Stop & Shop and Martin’s names, and which also owns the Peapod online grocery service.
– In August, the company broke ground on a $10 million 160,000 square foot greenhouse about 80 miles west of Chicago. BrightFarms has a deal to sell its products exclusively to Mariano’s supermarkets throughout Chicago and northern Illinois, with the new facility to grow 1 million pounds of greens, herbs and tomatoes each year.
BrightFarms Greenhouse