Feb 17, 2020
February 10, 2020 – Toronto, CANADA / A tech-based vertical farming company focused on cost-effectively growing leafy green vegetables at mass scale, Elevate Farms Inc. (“Elevate Farms”) is pleased to announce the closing of a $1.8M funding led by Brightspark Ventures.
Elevate Farms unique solution uses hydroponics and a proprietary automation system, paired with photobiology, to grow high-quality leafy greens (such as arugula, kale and basil) in a climate controlled environment.
Elevate Farms’ system aims to deliver a product that is larger, tastes better, and has higher nutritional content than traditionally-grown leafy greens – all at a lower cost. The produce grown by Elevate Farms also has the benefit of being local, completely non-GMO, as well as pesticide and chemical free.
“Elevate Farms represents the next generation of indoor farming: their system solves some of the biggest problems the first wave of vertical farms experienced” says Mark Skapinker, Managing Partner at Brightspark Ventures. He continued, “their edge is their ability to cost-effectively create a tasty and nutritious product - and grow it at a mass-market scale. We invested because we saw meaningful potential, being a team of world leading experts that can execute, proven technology, and true science being applied into a massive marketplace.”
Elevate Farms is the first to commercially implement an automated climate-controlled environment for plant-production that utilizes far less labour than other indoor farms.
Amin Jadavji, Elevate Farm’s CEO stated: “With the new funding, the company is now ready to scale significantly. This financing will allow us to execute on our currently secured flagship facilities in New Jersey and Niagara, each projected to produce in excess of one-million pounds of leafy greens annually.” Mr. Jadavji continued: “The funding will also fuel our plans to scale the business, grow our team, build and secure new and existing IP, prepare for business partnership opportunities, as well as finalize initial major orders and operational financing.”
Travis Kanellos, Elevate Farm’s Chief Strategy Officer added: “This is a major milestone for our North American operations. It also allows us to forge ahead on our global partnerships, as well as execute our global plan to build out facilities internationally over the next 12-months.”
Elevate Farms Inc., previously operating corporately as Intravision Greens Inc., is a technology-driven vertically-stacked indoor farming enterprise focused on mass scale and cost effective operations with patent secured and patent pending technology as well as over a decade of advanced photobiology research deployed.
Brightspark is one of Canada’s top performing venture capital firms, actively investing in exceptional entrepreneurs since 1999. We provide growth capital and expertise to disruptive, market-transforming Canadian tech companies in seed to growth stages. Since inception, Brightspark has invested across traditional VC Funds, and more recently under an investment model open to individual and non-institutional investors.