Temasek-backed vertical farming venture Unfold turns one with nine new hires and a 12,000 sq ft research facility in California, operational in early 2022.
The company was born out of a US$30 million ($40.7 million) JV between Singapore’s state investment company and Leaps by Bayer, the impact investment arm of German life sciences giant Bayer.
A year into operations, Unfold is nearly matching the schedule that president and CEO of Unfold Dr John Purcell had set out for the company. According to Unfold, the company has logged its first revenue, though it stopped short of details.
“We are now trialling and conducting plant analysis work at a nearby Bayer Crop Science R&D facility and have expanded our partnership with Bayer by forming a joint team focused on commercialisation of products in the vertical farming sector,” said the company in a press release on Aug 17.
In an interview with The Edge Singapore last year, Purcell said he expects it will take “a year or so” to get things up and running. “I think sometime next year we’ll be able to start having the first products that we’ve tested being sold, but it’ll be a few years before we really have our breeding programmes, our selection programmes, and the big impact we’re going to have.”
See: Temasek ventures into vertical farming with Unfold
Since then, the former senior vice-president and head of vegetables R&D in Bayer’s crop science division has assembled a core team of industry experts.
They include US indoor farming veteran Dan Albert, who is now vice-president of plant performance; agriculture and food start-up builder Micki Seibel, who serves as VP of digital; and Derek Drost, VP of genetics and Purcell’s former colleague at US seed maker Monsanto, which was acquired by Bayer in 2018.
Unfold has also found two advisers in Daphne Carmeli, VP of emerging business at Target; and Minos Athanassiadis, VP at food supply chain Software-as-a-Service company iFoodDecisionSciences.
“I never expected to build a company under such extraordinary world circumstances, but throughout the last year, we remained resolute and focused,” writes Purcell in a Medium post.
“We hired a team via video calls, successfully engaged customers virtually and found a site for R&D during the shutdown. Like much of the food and agriculture sectors we serve, we overcame unanticipated challenges, became more agile and found resilience we didn’t know we had,” he adds.
With the opening of its new R&D facility in Davis, California, early next year, Unfold will move one step closer to “accelerating its seed trials of leafy greens and developing the tomato, pepper and cucumber varieties,” says the company.
With a population of about 65,000, the city is also home to some 9,000 students at the University of California, Davis. Of its four colleges, the UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences offers degrees in 27 undergraduate majors and 33 graduate courses.
“Unfold’s R&D team will leverage expertise in AI, machine learning and plant biology to test and develop new varieties of fruits and vegetables faster,” says the company.
Temasek eyes vertical farming as a solution for land-scarce Singapore. The investment firm has stepped up its exposure to the life sciences and agri-food sector, from 7% in FY2019 to 10% in FY2021 ending March 31; out of a portfolio valued at US$283 billion.
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The idea had been seeded even earlier. In 2018, Temasek paid EUR3 billion for an additional 3.6% stake in Bayer and increased its total holdings to about 4%. The additional investment from Temasek was part of Bayer’s efforts to fund the US$62.5 billion takeover of Monsanto.
“Vertical farmers face many challenges in making their vision for the future of produce a reality while simultaneously creating a path to a profitable and sustainable business model,” says Purcell. “Launching a business during a pandemic made us finely attuned to these challenges, which is why we’re so proud of what we’ve accomplished to date and excited by what’s to come.”
Photos: Bayer
