A St. Louis-based grain and soybean manufacturer is planning to spend $445 million to expand its processing plant in Morristown.
Bunge North America Inc., an agribusiness and food company, plans to invest $360 million in new machinery and equipment, along with an estimated $85 million in construction and building improvements at its soybean crushing plant at 700 N. Range Line Road.
The effort is expected to result in 70 additional jobs by the end of 2025, raising employment at the plant to 177.
With a total capital investment of nearly half a billion dollars, Bunge’s expansion would be the largest economic development project in Shelby County since South Dakota-based biofuels productor Poet LLC built a $160 million facility in Shelbyville, creating 45 full-time jobs., according to Brian Asher, executive director of the Shelby County Economic Development Corp.
The Agtech Startup Eager to Scale Company in Advance of 2023 Growing Season
– Smart Apply®, an agtech startup whose precision spray system and data collection technology significantly reduces chemical and water usage in orchards, nurseries, and vineyards and advances sustainability goals, has successfully raised $1.8 million in an extension of a seed round, which is now closed with a total raise of $3.1 million.
Serra Ventures led the round with a commitment of $750,000. Also participating in the seed round extension are Frontier Angels, and VisionTech Angels. Both Frontier Angels and VisionTech Angels made follow-on investments to their initial seed round participation in May 2022.
“Serra Ventures had been following the great progress of the Smart Apply team for over a year before making our recent investment decision. This is a technology and a team that is a crucial value-add to the ag tech landscape. We are excited to join them as they tackle a major industry pain point of overspray and excessive chemical usage,” said
Serra Ventures CEO and Managing Partner Tim Hoerr.
The Smart Apply system helps solve significant financial, operational, regulatory, and sustainability challenges faced by orchards, nurseries, and vineyards around the world. In 2022, growers experienced intense pressure from rising chemical costs, droughts and labor shortages. Additionally, there are increased regulatory, marketplace, and consumer demands to reduce and better control chemical use.
Smart Apply President and CEO Jerry Johnson said, “The world’s fruit, nut, tree, grape, and other permanent crop growers recognize the need to adopt technology that supports production while protecting the environment. As growers experience the significant benefits of reduced dependence on chemicals, cost savings on chemicals and labor, and automated data reporting, demand for the Smart Apply system will grow exponentially. This raise will enable us to dramatically strengthen our presence and impact among key targets in advance of the 2023 growing season, including growers, equipment dealers and equipment manufacturers.”
Proceeds from the raise will be used to build upon Smart Apply’s impressive momentum in which it doubled sales of its precision spray and data collection system in 2021 and 2022. The company will be building out its sales team, increasing marketing and expanding manufacturing capacity.
Johnson adds the ease with which Smart Apply’s technology can be integrated into growers’ current processes is a major competitive advantage. “Our system is sold as a kit that is compatible with nearly all air-blast sprayers. It has the added benefit of capturing critical data while spraying to help growers monitor and manage orchard health. Growers can use this data for reporting to regulatory agencies as well as to support immediate and long-term operations of their orchard or vineyard.”
The Smart Apply Intelligent Spray Control System is based on more than a decade of development, field-testing, and research by the USDA Agriculture Research Service. A study published in The Journal of ASTM International in September 2020 found that the system reduced pesticide use by 60 percent, 52.8. percent and 50 percent on average at two nurseries and a fruit farm, respectively. Iowa State University shared results of their 2020-2021 research in May 2022 on Iowa and Ohio apple orchards that realized reductions in spray volumes of 40 to 80 percent compared to standard air blast sprayers.
Beck’s, CountryMark, Co-Alliance, and Central Indiana Ethanol announce collaboration with ClearFlame Engine Technologies to drive efforts that are expected to benefit row crop farmers through an innovative technology that decarbonizes heavy duty diesel combustion engines by enabling the use of any biofuel, including 100% ethanol (E98), as truck fuel.
“This is the first step in bringing ethanol to the forefront of engine technology,” said Scott Beck, president at Beck’s. “Our partnership with CountryMark, Co-Alliance, and Central Indiana Ethanol enabled the fueling of the truck during our pilot, highlighting the strides that Indiana agriculture companies can bring to the entire industry.”
With the integration of ethanol in engine technology, it has the opportunity to drive demand and production for ethanol for row crop farmers across the nation.
“The speed and agility with which the Indiana ethanol fuel coalition was able to come together to provide E98 fuel to our truck with Beck’s goes even further to underscore how easy it will be for ClearFlame’s technology to rapidly scale for fleets across the country,” said BJ Johnson, ClearFlame co-founder and CEO. “Ethanol is already distributed through fuel terminals nationwide. In addition to being widely available, it’s proven to be a much greener fuel, with substantially lower carbon emissions than diesel, and critically, significant cost savings.”
As Beck’s represents ClearFlame’s first official pilot, the truck is accumulating miles and driving long distances in a range of operating conditions, with short haul routes between Beck’s Indiana locations that include a variety of different load types.
“This pilot affords us the opportunity to better learn how the ClearFlame technology works and what can be improved to better meet consumer demand,” said Belinda Puetz, director of marketing at CountryMark. “A great deal of attention is being placed today on battery electric vehicles and that is not a wise energy choice for hard to electrify sectors, like long-haul trucks and production agriculture. Technologies, like ClearFlame, can be part of the solution to meet the future needs of our customers.”
ClearFlame expects to achieve commercialization of its engine modification technology by the end of 2023.
The SEEDesign™ company pairs AI-powered predictive design with multiplex gene editing to unlock the full potential of seed
Inari today announced that it secured $124 million in the successful completion of its latest fundraise. Working to deliver nature-positive solutions, the SEEDesign™ company’s cumulative equity raised now totals $475 million. The investment will further advance Inari’s leading position in multiplex gene-edited seed technology, support expansion of company product development and ultimately deliver new value in the commercial seed market.
The Series E fundraise received strong support from investors, including new investor Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments) and company founder Flagship Pioneering. Additional funds were raised from existing investors including Hanwha Impact Partners, NGS Super and Banque Pictet on behalf of some of their customers, as well as new investor Sage Hill Investors.
“This news reaffirms the relevance and importance of our mission at Inari to unlock the full potential of seed,” said Inari CEO Ponsi Trivisvavet. “These investments put us in a position to truly push the boundaries of what is possible and design seeds for a more sustainable, nature-positive food system.”
For Flagship Pioneering, the funds signify continued support of Inari’s founding vision.
“When Flagship Pioneering founded Inari, we envisioned the potential of adapting technology platforms previously used for human health to transform our global food system and have a restorative impact on our planet,” said Robert Berendes, Ph.D., Flagship Pioneering executive partner and Inari board member. “This fundraise further validates the company’s pioneering advances and fuels the next phase of bringing breakthrough seed solutions to market, thereby unlocking new possibilities for farmers, consumers and the planet.”
Inari’s unique take on tackling climate change focuses on using the seed itself as a driver for sustainable solutions.
“Inari is introducing innovations that stand to make a big impact on the long-term future of the global food system,” said Leon Pedersen, managing director and head of growth equity at CPP Investments. “As long-term investors, we are confident that our investment in Inari will support their efforts to feed the world more sustainably while also producing strong risk-adjusted returns for the CPP Fund.”
In addition to the successful equity fundraise, Inari also entered into a refinanced and upsized loan agreement with K2 HealthVentures, a healthcare-focused specialty finance company. This new investment enables Inari to access up to $60 million in debt capital, further increasing the company’s future financial flexibility.
Both of these financial developments support Inari’s SEEDesignTM platform which aims to deliver significant increases in yield while simultaneously improving crops’ use efficiency of resources such as water and fertilizer.
$300,000 IEDC investment will offset costs for 50 Xterns at Hoosier companies
TechPoint’s signature Xtern program has helped attract and retain tech talent to Indiana for nearly 10 years, but the companies that have benefitted most from the early career development effort are established companies. Exciting young startups – which could one day grow into local or global giants – often don’t have a robust budget or structure to attract talent, provide training and offer amenities to engage these young professionals in pursuing lifelong careers in Central Indiana.
That will change next year, thanks to a $300,000 investment in the Xtern program by the Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IEDC) which for years has invested in workforce training grants. Indiana Secretary of Commerce Brad Chambers sees TechPoint’s Xtern Startup Assistance Program as a smart expansion of IEDC’s workforce training efforts, which traditionally target adult workers in need of learning new skills to adapt to evolving technology and to help Hoosier businesses thrive.
“Indiana is in a global competition for talent, and TechPoint’s Xtern program is a proven, highly popular and effective way to generate much of the talent we need,” Chambers said. “This is a solid investment in growing our own talent to meet the demands of the future as we continue to recruit new economic development in established sectors as well as new ones like microchip and battery innovation.”
TechPoint President and CEO Ting Gootee said the assistance program is part of the organization’s examination of how best to continue its mission of helping Hoosier tech and tech-driven companies access all the resources they need to succeed.
NEXT Studios Managing Entrepreneur John McDonald helps Hoosier entrepreneurs develop their ideas, launch startups and take their products to market. He said the Xtern startup initiative should be well received by Indiana’s tech community.
“Entrepreneurs are deep on ideas but usually short on the talented people they need to get their innovations to market,” he said. “We’ll definitely be spreading the word throughout our network to match up companies with the Xterns. It’s a great short-term help for the startups but also a great way to grow even more entrepreneurs.”
Chelsea Linder, a Partner at gener8tor which runs accelerators for startups across Indiana, appreciated that the Startup Assistance Program focus is statewide. “Indiana is full of smart and eager entrepreneurs, and it’s great to see TechPoint and the IEDC reaching outside central Indiana to offer this really valuable help,” she said.
Gootee said TechPoint staff has spent much of 2022 looking at how best Indiana can overcome the global talent challenge, which it has described as a perfect storm of a large number of retirees, fewer workers to replace them and increased demand for tech workers. Part of the solution is the creation of new pathways to great jobs and a collaborative effort to grow Indiana’s tech workforce by 41,000 workers by 2030 across the board in startup, scale-up and enterprise level Hoosier companies. An examination of existing programming showed that in the 2022 Xtern class, only 17 of the 139 students were employed by startup companies.
“These companies, and many others, are pushing the envelope into new and exciting areas that will enable Indiana to showcase its innovative spirit and abilities,” she said. “To get there, they’ll need as much smart, fresh talent as they can get, and this should be a great help to them.”
The Xtern program does more than give college students a well-paid, 10-week-long summer internship. They also receive – at no cost to them – housing, professional development, civic engagement opportunities and social networking designed to help them see Indiana as a place to begin and grow their careers. Survey data consistently shows that about 25 percent of the Xterns enter the program likely to live and work in Indiana after college. Ten weeks later, more than 70 percent of them say they’re likely to stay in Indiana, and more than half of the Xtern alumni start their careers in Indiana.
Companies that employ Xterns are charged $4,000 per student to offset the wrap-around experience costs. Startup companies, some with bootstrapped funding, operate on much leaner budgets and may not be able to justify the upfront cost of hosting an Xtern. Under the agreement, IEDC will match 50 percent of the costs for 50 Xterns who would be available exclusively to Indiana-headquartered startups that:
Have been in business no more than 10 years, with preference give to those in operation for 5 years or less
Have 25 or fewer employees, with preference given to those with fewer than 10 employees
Are focused on creating innovative solutions that will help Indiana thrive in the Digital Age in sectors like agriculture, education, life sciences and advanced manufacturing.
Since 2014, TechPoint’s Xtern program has connected more than 1,300 college students with summer internship positions with 150 employers in the Indiana tech ecosystem. The recruitment pipeline attracts applications annually from more than 2,000 college students from more than 200 universities across the country.
Chambers said the idea to work with the Xtern program came from an intern working with the IEDC after researching many different potential solutions to the challenge of keeping talent in Indiana.
TechPoint will bring the additional Xterns into its 2023 summer program. Students can learn more and apply here until October 10.
Last week, AgriNovus had the privilege of an invitation to The White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health where President Biden unveiled a five-pillar strategy to eradicate hunger by 2030. Mitch Frazier had the chance to catch up with the Deputy Under Secretary for USDA’s Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services, Stacy Dean, to discuss this new framework to end hunger and the role of innovation in the agbiosciences to make it possible.
Using tech to connect those facing food-insecurity to high-quality nutrition is a problem AgriNovus has set out to solve. Learn more about our HungerTech Challenge and the work we’re doing here: www.agrinovusindiana.com/hungertech.
Indianapolis-based McYoung Foods LLC is celebrating the opening of a new manufacturing and warehouse facility for its Awesome Granola brand. The company has invested $500,000 to establish the nut-free facility, which brings production of the gluten- and allergy-free granola product to central Indiana from its previous location in Fargo, North Dakota. Chairman Bill McGinnis says the new, 6,200-square-foot location on Indy’s northeast side more than doubles its previous production space.
“From what I’ve been told, Indianapolis is within 10 hours of the 50% of the U.S. population,” said McGinnis. “We ship all over the country, so it’s really nice to be centrally located. And the cost of shipping in Indianapolis is a whole lot less than the cost of shipping out of Fargo, North Dakota.”
AgTech is Indiana’s fastest growing agbioscience innovation platform and to continue that growth, a top-notch base of talent is required. This week, we are joined by Dennis Trinkle, Executive Vice President of TechPoint, and Sheila Simpson, Chief Human Resources Officer at Intelinair, to talk about a new opportunity to connect agbioscience employers to tech talent: Xtern.
Learn how your company can collaborate with TechPoint + AgriNovus to participate in Xtern. Visit here: https://techpoint.org/xtern-students/
Advanced Agrilytics – an agronomy services company focused on unlocking the potential of every acre – has announced the appointment of Jody Longshore to the newly created position of chief commercial officer. This role on the executive leadership team was designed to oversee the growth of the company’s three business segments: direct-to-farm agronomy services, business-to-business partnerships, and Ag Ingenuity Partners as
well as leading the marketing function.
“Delivering on the promise of precision agriculture is the vision of Advanced Agrilytics and we’re thrilled to have Jody as part of the team to continue that effort,” said Kay Kuenker, CEO. “We believe his professional experience and leadership will have an immediate and positive impact on our team as we continue to grow across all business segments.”
Longshore comes to Advanced Agrilytics with over 15 years of experience in corporate sales and marketing, most recently with Sentera where he served as the company’s vice president of sales and marketing. Previously, he spent time with General Electric in their Commercial Finance business where he earned his Six Sigma Black Belt certification, and Ceridian, a human resources and payroll software company. Most of his career was spent at Cargill working in roles in Horizon Milling, Corporate Responsibility, and the Grain and Edible Oilseeds business where he served as the General Manager for the McDonald’s North American Oils Business Unit. Longshore also served as the General Manager for the Indigo Ag grain trading marketplace and as Vice President of sales and marketing for Sentera, an ag tech start-up out of Minneapolis-St. Paul.
“Advanced Agrilytics is uniquely positioned across our three complimentary lines of business that together have incredible potential,” said Longshore. “From the personal approach of the Grower Direct business to Ag Ingenuity Partners’ world class research and our strategic business-to-business partnerships, we are quickly broadening access to our proprietary insights on more acres with more customers in more geographies. I’m
excited to join the team at this dynamic time of growth and look forward to continuing the momentum.”
There’s a new kid in town and he’s using artificial intelligence to grow shrimp in shipping containers near downtown Indianapolis. We are joined today by Daniel Russek, founder and CEO of Atarraya, a new Indiana company focused on transforming a nearly $50 billion shrimp industry.
He talks about the hurdles he overcame before developing the company’s shipping container system, Shrimpbox, how their controlled environment creates a more sustainable product and when consumers can expect to see Atarraya shrimp on their dinner plates.
