March 10, 2021

photo credit – Infarm

By Lynda Kiernan, Global AgInvesting Media

It wasn’t that long ago that Berlin-based urban farming company Infarm announced its first close of its series C at $170 million, with expectations that the round will exceed $200 million. 

Now, approximately six months later, the company shared that it has raised an additional $100 million from investors including Hanaco Ventures and Atomico to expand into new crops and into new geographies. 

Founded in 2013 by Osnat Michaeli and the brothers Erez and Guy Galonska, Infarm has pioneered an urban production model that combines modular in-store micro-vertical farming units with IoT technologies and data science that are located in supermarkets, restaurants, and distribution centers. By integrating each modular unit with Infarm’s central farming platform, the company can collect data on each location and create optimal growing environments that tailor light, temperature, pH, and nutrients.

Infarm already produces salad greens and select herbs, but as the global pandemic has created increased interest in local and urban food production, the company sees a window of opportunity to expand its offerings to include foods such as tomatoes, chilies, and mushrooms.

“The coronavirus pandemic has put a global spotlight on the urgent agricultural and ecological challenges of our time,” said Erez Galonska, co-founder and CEO of Infarm, in September 2020. “At Infarm, we believe there’s a better, healthier way to feed our cities: increasing access to fresh, pure, sustainable produce, grown as close as possible to people.”

Currently present in 10 countries, Infarm has more than 500 Infarm locations from which it harvests more than 500,000 plants per month, which are grown using 99.5 percent less space, 95 percent less water, and 90 percent less transportation than traditional agriculture. Infarm’s growing system is also free of pesticides, and uses energy that is 90 percent renewable toward a goal of zero emission food production next year.

Each of Infarm’s controlled environment growing units are connected to a central cloud-based “farm-brain” that collects more than 50,000 data points over the course of each plant’s lifespan. Over time, the platform “learns”, adapts, and improves so that each harvest is better than the one before.

Through this cloud-enabled farming production model Infarm estimates that it has saved 35 million liters of water, 49,000 square meters of land, and has reduced transportation by 3.1 million kilometers. 

The company stated that it is this “modular, data-driven, and distributed approach – a combination of big data, IoT, and cloud analytics, in addition to rapid growth at a global scale”, that sets it apart from its rivals. 

Now with total funding raised to-date of $400 million, making the company one of the highest-funded vertical farming operations in the world, growth and scaling are key objectives for Infarm. Currently the company is building large-scale farming that will enable it to scale to more than 5,000,000 square feet across 100 “growing centers” across Europe, North America, and Asia by 2025, and over the past 12 months has formed a string of important partnerships with some of the world’s leading retailers, including Albert Heihn in the Netherlands, Aldi Süd in Germany, COOP/Irma in Denmark, Sobeys, Safeway, and Thrifty Foods in Canada, Kinokuniya in Japan, Kroger in the U.S., and Marks & Spencer and Selfridges in the UK.

Reflecting on the company’s most recent funding and its growth trajectory, Infarm CEO Galonska said, “This additional $100 million funding on the back of Series C, from our existing investors is a great vote of confidence in our accelerating growth, as we continue to deepen our footprint in existing markets, roll-out new product varieties, and hire top talent to build the largest cloud-connected farming network in the world.”

– Lynda Kiernan is editor with GAI Media, and is managing editor and daily contributor for Global AgInvesting’s AgInvesting Weekly News and  Agtech Intel News, and HighQuest Group’s Oilseed & Grain News. She is also a contributor to the GAI Gazette. She can be reached at lkiernan@globalaginvesting.com.