Halo Business Angel Network (HBAN), the all-island organisation responsible for the promotion of business angel investment, has announced that the HBAN angels have participated in an oversubscribed €1.3m funding round in agri-tech start-up CropBiome.
HBAN, a joint initiative between Enterprise Ireland, InterTradeIreland and Invest Northern Ireland, said that angels from HBAN Singapore and HBAN Bloom Equity Syndicate had invested €405,000 in the business, with additional funding coming from DeepIE Ventures Management Company Ltd, and Enterprise Ireland High Potential Start-Up Funding.
CropBiome, which is spun-out of both UCD and Trinity College Dublin, sources, selects, ferments, characterises and tests microbes derived from wild plant species that are closely related to mass-produced wheat and other cereal crops.
The microbes or organisms are natural and unharmful to plant and animal life and are used to create seed dressings, which coat the raw seeds of the mass-produced crops, and produce healthier crops as a result.
Field and greenhouse crop trials have shown that the seed dressing can improve crop performance in drought conditions and when fertiliser use is reduced, resulting in reduced chemical inputs, enhanced crop resilience and improved soil health.
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All outcomes provide targeted economic benefits to farmers, and CropBiome has a biobank of more than 600 microbes that the company is testing to determine their impact on stress resistance, nutrient use efficiency and overall crop yields.
The funding will help the NovaUCD-headquartered company to grow its team from eight to 12 by the end of 2023 with new laboratory and field scientists as well as business development personnel.
The new staff would be essential in helping CropBiome to partner and carry out trials with major seed distributors in Europe’s largest grain markets – the UK, Poland, Romania, Ukraine, Germany, France and Spain.
The company expects that this work will enable it to bring its products to market by mid-2025, with revenues forecast to reach €5m by the end of that year.
CropBiome successfully applied for a €1.5m Disruptive Technologies Innovation Fund (DTIF) grant from the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, receiving €500,000 of this against proposed expenditure. It was a regional winner of InterTradeIreland’s Seedcorn Investor Readiness Competition in 2020.
Sean Daly, CEO of CropBiome, said that food producers are under pressure to become more sustainable and reduce chemical use by at least 50% and fertiliser use, specifically, by 20% by 2030 under the EU's Farm to Fork Strategy
“CropBiome’s product development and market entry strategy is aligned to help meet these targets," he continued.
"Initially, we will aggressively tackle the European grain market – which represents a significant proportion of the world’s total grain production – with our unique sustainable biological solutions, which are the result of five years of extensive scientific research by our founders Prof. Fiona Doohan at UCD and Prof. Trevor Hodkinson and Dr Brian Murphy at TCD.
"We aim to enter the market at a similar price point as existing chemical seed coating products with our biological sustainable alternative and believe that this will give us a major competitive advantage. By 2025, we expect that our success in Europe will enable us to expand into North and South America, Australasia and other cereal-producing regions and countries.
“We are delighted to take on this seed round funding, which will help us to accelerate the commercial development of our products. The funding from HBAN angels, as well as their guidance, has been strategically very important to us as we seek to grow our team and look ahead to Series A funding in 2024. Our funders have valuable in-depth industry knowledge and truly believe in our product and the real-world, environmental impact that it will have.”
Dr. Daniel Kearney, chair of HBAN Singapore, said: “CropBiome is an extremely exciting biotechnology company that is solving a global problem, locally in Ireland. As a result, they have not only secured funding from investors in Ireland, but also from our Singapore HBAN syndicate and two HBAN angels in Belgium.
“The CropBiome team impressed our investors with their deep knowledge, ambition and unique solution that helps grain growers worldwide produce more sustainable and climate-resilient crops that secure our future food supply. With regions working to drive down the reliance on chemicals for crop production, CropBiome is primed to succeed in an important growth market.”
Niamh Sterling, consultant at HBAN, said: “Investment in start-ups that make a positive, real-world impact is rising.
"Future-looking businesses like CropBiome are solving pressing issues that will make the world a better place and that is very attractive from an angel investor’s perspective. It is rewarding in terms of returns, and also an overall sense of making a difference in the world.”
Photo: (l-r) Niamh Sterling and Sean Daly.
