Solar Foods Completes €8 million Series B Financing

DOUGLAS, ISLE OF MAN / ACCESSWIRE / November 16, 2023 / Agronomics (LSE:ANIC), a leading listed company focused on the field of cellular agriculture, is pleased to announce that portfolio company Solar Foods Oy ('Solar Foods') has raised €8 million in a Series B financing round carried out through the Finnish-based investment organizer Springvest Oyj, with participation from existing investors including Happiness Capital. The financing from this Series B round will be used for continued building and ramping up production of their single cell protein Solein^TM.

Since Agronomics' first investment in Solar Foods, significant technical, regulatory, and operational progress has been made. This includes a substantial increase in the productivity of SolarFoods' organism by over 10x, achieving regulatory approval of Solein ^TM in Singapore and submission of a dossier to the European Food Safety Authority for approval in the European Union. In December 2022, Solar Foods received €34 million in grant funding to support the construction of its first commercial scale facility, Factory 01, which management understands is currently scheduled to be operational in the first half of 2024.

Agronomics has invested, in aggregate, €6 million in Solar Foods, being a €3 million investment in Solar Foods Series A and €3 million in the form of a pre-Series B Convertible Promissory Note ('CPN'). Following the close of this Series B round, the CPN has converted into Series B shares. Agronomics now holds an equity stake in Solar Foods of 6.4% on a fully diluted basis. Subject to audit, Agronomics will now carry this position forward at a book value of €13.3 million, representing an IRR of 35% and a MOIC of 2.2x.

A link to the Solar Foods announcement is as follows: https://solarfoods.com/solar-foods-share-issue-oversubscribed/

About Solar Foods

Solar Foods produces protein using carbon dioxide and electricity. Solein ^TM production, irrespective of weather and climate conditions, liberates global protein production from the constraints of traditional agriculture. Solar Foods, founded in 2017 in Espoo, Finland by Dr Pasi Vainikka, Dr Juha-Pekka Pitkänen, Sami Holmström, Jari Tuovinen, Professor Jero Ahola, and Janne Mäkelä as a spinoff from VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and LUT University. www.solarfoods.com

About Solein^TM

Solein^TM is a microbial protein-rich powder that contains all the essential amino acids. It is produced using a bioprocess where microbes are fed with gases, including carbon dioxide, hydrogen, and oxygen, together with small amounts of nutrients. The bioprocess resembles winemaking, with carbon dioxide and hydrogen replacing sugar as the source of carbon and energy.

This type of production method has the potential to transform the sustainability, availability, and transparency of what we eat and where food can be produced. It is not reliant on agriculture, weather, or climate: it can be produced in harsh conditions such as deserts, Arctic areas, even space.

Learn more about Solein^TM at www.solein.com

About Agronomics

Agronomics is the leading listed venture capital firm with a focus on cellular agriculture. The Company has established a portfolio of over 20 companies at the Pre-Seed to Series C stage in this rapidly advancing sector. It seeks to secure minority stakes in companies owning technologies with defensible intellectual property that offer new ways of producing food and materials with a focus on products historically derived from animals. These technologies are driving a major disruption in agriculture, offering solutions to improve sustainability, as well as addressing human health, animal welfare and environmental damage. This disruption will decouple supply chains from the environment and animals, as well as being fundamental to feeding the world's expanding population.

About Cellular Agriculture

Cellular Agriculture is the production of agriculture products directly from cells, as opposed to raising an animal for slaughter or growing crops. This encompasses cell culture to produce cultivated meat and materials, and fermentation processes that harness a combination of molecular biology, synthetic biology, tissue engineering and biotechnology to massively simplify production methods in a sustainable manner.

Over the coming decades, the source of the world's food supply traditionally derived from conventional agriculture is going to change dramatically. We have already witnessed the first wave of this shift with the consumer adoption of plant-based alternative proteins but today, we are on the cusp of an even bigger wave of change, facilitated by advances in cellular agriculture. This change is necessary, given scientists' claims that if we maintain existing animal protein consumption patterns, then we will not meet the Paris Agreement's goal of limiting warming to 1.5℃.

AT Kearney, a global consultancy firm, projects that cultivated meat's market share will reach 35% by 2040. This, combined with the Good Food Institute's estimate that a US $1.8 trillion investment is needed to produce just 10% of the world's protein using this technology, means that we are on the cusp of a multi-decade flow of capital to build out manufacturing facilities. Funding in the field of cellular agriculture is accelerating, however, it is still less than US$ 5 billion - the amount invested worldwide since the industry's inception in 2016.

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SOURCE: Agronomics Limited