CoverCress Inc. raised $8 million in what COO Mike DeCamp tells the 4thEst8 is a “Series B-1 round.” The round was led by two new investors, Bungee Ventures and REG Ventures. DeCamp says all existing investors also took part and that this investment gives the company enough runway to get to commercial production by fall of 2022. The money comes from companies that are in the supply chain CoverCress would need to go from seed design to food and oil processing.
Mike DeCamp, CoverCress COO
“Leaps by Bayer is also a strategic investor,” said DeCamp. “Our cap table is a great reflection of our full value chain. You look at a group like Bayer that represents things from a seed and genetic standpoint, then you’ve got Bunge in the mid-stream representing the ‘crush’ piece of the value chain, then you add REG all the way downstream on the processing production side from a renewable fuel standpoint.”
CoverCress is selectively breeding and gene editing the pennycress plant to reduce the fiber in its seeds by as much as 50 percent, thereby increasing both the oil it produces, and the nutritional value of the meal that remains after the oil is extracted. The 4thEst8 first reported about CoverCress when the company landed its first patent in the summer of 2020. The patent covers taking that meal and turning it into animal feed. Unmodified pennycress variants are generally considered weeds, but CoverCress is developing a variety (also called CoverCress) intended as a ‘cover crop’ – to improve soil conditions and diversity over the winter, in between fall harvest and spring planting of row crops like corn and soybean. The bonus is that with the lower volume of fiber, CoverCress seeds effectively produce more oil and plant proteins – giving farmers another cash crop.
The company was founded in 2013 as Arvegenix by ex-Monsanto executives Dennis Plummer, Michael Roth and Vijay Chauhan. The company has 20 full time employees, has brought in more than $10 million in grants and prior to this round raised $11.9M. Crunchbase cites investors as St. Louis Arch Angels, Missouri Technology Corporation, The Yield Lab, Leaps by Bayer, Fulcrum Global Capital, Prolog Ventures, Prelude Ventures, BioGenerator, and Bayer.
Right now the company has ‘foundation’ fields of about 100 acres planted with its seed varieties that will be harvested in May to produce the seed stock that will be commercially available for the winter growing season of 2021-2022 – all leading up to a harvest in the late spring (or early summer) of 2022.
“We’re going to have enough seed from what’s growing right now to do a soft-launch commercially of about 1000 acres that’ll get planted in September of this year,” said DeCamp. “That planting will have a dual purpose… we’ll continue to build our inventory and harvest that seed in the form of grain that will go to an end market user that will put it in a feed additive for chicken production.”
They only get to magnify their inventory once a year, during the winter, but this growth is aimed at an end game that produces both food (for animals, and maybe people) as well as oil for energy or food.
Other 4thEst8 articles:
BAMSL names ag-tech startup ‘Inventor of the Year’
1st Patent Awarded to Ag-Tech Startup with $7M in VC
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