TORONTO and SAN FRANCISCO – Last week, agriculture businesses Full Harvest and Ukko Agro each announced investments by Telus Ventures.
Full Harvest, a San Francisco-based produce business-to-business marketplace that specializes in surplus and imperfect produce, announced it closed a $23 million Series B round of growth financing, which was led by Telus Ventures.
“Working with some of the largest food and beverage companies (Danone North America, Health-Ade), processors (SVZ) and growers (Tanimura & Antle, Church Brothers, Deardorff Farms), Full Harvest reduces produce sourcing headaches and food waste by moving the produce supply chain online – allowing buyers to purchase more sustainable produce, lowering food production costs, and creating an additional revenue stream for farmers,” the press release says.
“We are committed to leveraging the power of technology to build a safer, more efficient, and sustainable food chain; and our investment in Full Harvest aligns with that mission,” said Mario Mele, vice-president of corporate strategy at Telus Ventures, in the press release.
“With its strong leadership and mission-driven approach, combined with our growing expertise in the AgTech space, Full Harvest is well-positioned to evolve the produce market and drastically reduce food waste by leveraging data and technology to digitize what is still a very analog market. We look forward to helping the team scale the company and transform the industry to the benefit of farmers, buyers, and the environment.”
Full Harvest plans to use the investment to expand its online marketplace, improve its user experience and grow its network of national buyers and sellers. The company “will also focus on expanding its industry-leading data analytics offering to answer the growing demand for insights on produce availability, pricing, specifications, sustainable offerings, quality, forecasting support, etc.,” the press release says.
Full Harvest further plans to scale out the global use of its verified rescued produce seal.
“Dedicated to empowering ‘full harvests’ with zero food waste to support a more sustainable ag ecosystem, we are transforming a fragmented and opaque offline produce supply chain into a flexible, transparent, reliable solution by directly connecting growers with processors and food and beverage brands online,” said Christine Moseley, founder and CEO of Full Harvest.
“With the influx of capital, we plan to build on our incredible customer successes and expand into new markets to make the global produce supply chain more efficient and sustainable.”
Jay Crone, an investment director at Telus, joined Full Harvest’s board and will work closely with the company’s executive team in order “to expand and optimize its marketplace and network,” the press release says.
Ukko Agro Ltd., which is “a Toronto-based technology company that provides plug and play predictive analytics for the agriculture sector,” announced it closed its $5.1 million Series Seed investment round led by Emmertech with participation from Telus Ventures among other organizations.
“Ukko Agro was founded in 2017 by Ketan Kaushish and Avi Bhargava, with the vision of instilling predictability and transparency logistics across the agriculture value chain to help grow successful crops,” according to a separate press release.
“Since then, Ukko has become a strong software and predictive analytics company and has developed the capability to rapidly build predictive models, in house, for disease, insect, crop growth and irrigation forecasting.”
