US$ 8 million investment in The EVERY Company
4th November 2021
("Agronomics" or the "Company")
US$ 8 million investment in The EVERY Company
in conjunction with a US$ 7 million investment from New Agrarian Company Limited
Agronomics, the leading listed company focused on the field of cellular agriculture, is pleased to announce a US$ 8 million investment in The EVERY Company ("EVERY", formerly Clara Foods Co.), for an equity stake on a fully diluted basis of 1.39%. This equates to an estimated portfolio weighting based on the Company's last reported Net Asset Value of 5.7%. Agronomics is investing as part of a minimum fundraise of US$ 127.5 million undertaken by EVERY.
EVERY is a leading precision fermentation company with a key focus on the commercialisation of proteins traditionally derived from animals. EVERY was founded in 2014 by Arturo Elizondo, with the mission to accelerate the transition to animal-free and more sustainable proteins and reduce factory farming practices .
Jim Mellon, Non-executive Director of Agronomics commented:-
"We are extremely pleased to become investors in EVERY, a leader in the cellular agriculture field, with its world class precision fermentation platform. This investment broadens Agronomics' portfolio further into other major protein categories outside of meat and dairy. We are delighted to be working with Arturo to accelerate the commercialisation of animal-free egg proteins."
New Agrarian Company Limited
In conjunction with this transaction and under the guidance of the management team at Shellbay Limited, the Company's advisor, a new unquoted entity has been formed to accept funds from private equity investors seeking exposure to the field of cellular agriculture who are unable to invest in a public company, either due to restrictions within their mandate and/or internal policies preventing them from doing so. The new entity is called New Agrarian Company Limited ("New Agrarian"). The Company has agreed with New Agrarian to the effect that should they contemplate making an investment alongside each other in opportunities sourced by Shellbay Limited's management team, as all investments are approved by the Company's board, the independent non-executive directors, currently Richard Reed and David Giampaolo, will provide oversight on any potential conflicts of interest at both the time of any co-investment and on an ongoing basis. Should a conflict be identified between the two entities, this will be referred to a newly established "Oversight Committee", comprising of one independent director from each entity with an independent chair.
The Board believes that the establishment of New Agrarian is a positive development for the Company as the combined capital bases of the two entities will facilitate leading larger funding rounds and provide the ability to negotiate improved lead investor terms. Agronomics alone would have been unable to achieve these due to size limitations. By acting together, the combined entities will be able to set terms and secure preferred allocations in the highly competitive funding round environment.
New Agrarian participated in the financing for EVERY on the same terms as Agronomics with a US $7 million investment resulting in a fully diluted equity stake of 1.21%.
Agronomics continues to seek a suitable additional independent non-executive director and will make a further announcement on this in due course.
Since this Subscription is considered a Substantial Transaction under AIM Rule 12, this announcement requires certain disclosures under Schedule Four. EVERY is an early-stage company generating small revenues with operating costs of approximately US $1,031,865 per month, and total assets as at 31 December 2021 of US $24,368,897 million including cash or near cash of US $23,403,909 million with no material liabilities. The Subscription will be funded from the Company's existing cash resources.
The EVERY Company, headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, is a market leader in engineering, manufacturing and formulating animal-free, animal proteins as ingredients for the global food and beverage industry. Originally founded as Clara Foods in 2014, EVERY rebranded in 2021 to better convey its vision to bring animal-free proteins to everyone, everywhere. EVERY is a team of passionate changemakers who are reimagining the factory farm model with a more sustainable and kinder alternative. Leveraging precision fermentation to produce super-functional and one-to-one replacement proteins from microorganisms, EVERY is on a mission to decouple the world's proteins from the animals that make them. The EVERY Company's Press Kit can be found here .
Agronomics is a leading listed company focused on the field of cellular agriculture. The Company has established a portfolio of 17 companies at the 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. A full list of Agronomics' portfolio companies is available at https://agronomics.im/ .
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. This is being 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 $1.8 trillion investment will be required in order to produce just 10% of the world's protein using this technology, means that we are on the cusp of a multi-decade flow of capital to build out manufacturing facilities. Funding in the field of cellular agriculture is accelerating, however still less than US$ 1 billion has been invested worldwide since the industry's inception in 2016.
The information contained within this announcement is deemed by the Company to constitute inside information as stipulated under the Market Abuse Regulations (EU) No. 596/2014 ('MAR'). Upon the publication of this announcement via a Regulatory Information Service ('RIS'), this inside information is now considered to be in the public domain.
For further information please contact:
|
Agronomics Limited |
Beaumont Cornish Limited |
Cenkos Securities Plc |
Peterhouse Capital Limited |
TB Cardew |
|
The Company |
Nomad |
Joint Broker |
Joint Broker |
Public Relations |
|
Richard Reed Denham Eke |
Roland Cornish James Biddle |
Giles Balleny Michael Johnson |
Lucy Williams Charles Goodfellow |
Ed Orlebar Joe McGregor |
|
+44 (0) 1624 639396 info@agronomics.im |
+44 (0) 207 628 3396 |
+44 (0) 207 397 8900 |
+44 (0) 207 469 0936 |
+44 (0) 20 7930 0777 +44 (0) 7738 724 630 agronomics@tbcardew.com |
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