[ad_1]
Pure Harvest Smart Farms’ ground-breaking farming system has attracted a wide variety of investors.
Dubai: The company’s chief financial officer, Tariq Sanad, told Salaam Gateway that Abu Dhabi-based Pure Harvest Smart Farms plans to raise funds through new sukuk (sukuk) or conventional bonds to support its food security-driven expansion plans.
Since its founding in 2016, the ag-tech company’s ground-breaking farming system that can produce year-round crops in the desert has attracted a wide variety of investors.
“Our strategy is to grow 365 days a year because that is sustainable and serves the food security mandate. During the pandemic and the recent Ukrainian-Russian conflict, we have seen a very unstable and fragile food system,” said Sa Nader said.
“These two events highlight the importance of food security, especially in areas where we operate, which have harsh climates and are reliant on food imports,” he said.
Pure Harvest’s Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) system uses a semi-automated greenhouse that optimizes every aspect of the climate, including temperature, humidity and carbon dioxide.
With this technology, the UAE-based company can grow fruits and vegetables using one-seventh the water used on traditional greenhouse farms.
The system is a much-needed solution to the growing food security challenge exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as it can boost local production in environmentally constrained areas.
“We used everything we learned from R&D to ensure we could control the internal environment, which represents a Mediterranean climate that is conducive to year-round production of fruit and vegetables,” says Sanad.
“We can’t continue to rely on 80% of our food [in the UAE] Come from outside. We’re solving a problem that we’re seeing right now, way ahead of other regions. “
From tomatoes six years ago, today, Pure Harvest can now grow three crops. These include vine crops such as cucumbers, tomatoes, zucchini (zucchini), eggplant (eggplant), and peppers; all types of leafy green vegetables; and berries.
“With pipelines currently under construction, all our facilities in Kuwait, UAE and Saudi Arabia are capable of producing around 1,430 tonnes per month,” Sanad said.
“Our strategy is to serve locals locally; this is not production for export. However, we are exporting our expertise in global expansion.”
The company received $180 million from global investors in June.
“We started with a small semi-commercial facility in Nahel, Abu Dhabi, where we did all the research and development, then we scaled up our investments and raised sukuk that would fund our growth in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, where we Another six-hectare facility was built there,” Sanad said.
“We are now replicating this. We want to enter Kuwait, we have acquired another factory in the UAE and we are looking forward to retrofitting it with our technology. We are also expanding into Southeast Asia.”
The latest funding brings Pure Harvest’s total raised to date to $387.1 million. This follows last year’s $50 million sukuk funding round led by Dubai-based SHUAA Capital.
He noted that sukuk’s success is linked to the company’s food security goals and environmental, social and governance (ESG) elements, as well as its location in the Middle East, which is home to a large Islamic financing base.
However, even traditional investors are backing the money. One of the major investors in the sukuk was American investment firm Franklin Templeton, which said at the time that the investment reflected its ESG and Shariah compliance requirements.
“We are definitely interested in doing another sukuk. The first one has been fully paid off. We are now looking at raising another [conventional] Hope to issue a bond or sukuk in the next six to eight months,” Sanad said.
“These are big investments because we have ambitious growth plans to fund. We make glass and steel, which are better financed with debt like sukuk from a cost capital perspective. We are looking at non-dilutive capital. “
As for Southeast Asia, the company is eyeing expansion in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines.
“Even though Southeast Asia is very green, it has a humid subtropical climate, so you don’t see the fruits and vegetables you see elsewhere, and they’re highly import-dependent,” Sanad said.
“A key part of our investment [for the greenhouse food production systems] It’s electricity and carbon dioxide; so being close to a power plant has a huge advantage in cost structure. We are looking to work with business partners to achieve this and help us find the right infrastructure. “
Globally, the controlled environment agriculture market is expected to grow from around $74 billion in 2020 to over $172 billion in 2025, according to U.S.-based data. KD Market Insights.
In addition to hydroponic greenhouse farming, Pure Harvest is also expanding into vertical farming, another form of CEA, by partnering with the highly urbanized South Korean PlanTFarm. “We have learned everything from the most difficult moments. We have chosen a country [the UAE] It has one of the harshest climates, with not only high temperatures but also high humidity, which is a key factor that you need to consider when building these facilities,” said Sanad.
“If you’re going to create a solution, it should work in the worst-case scenario. That’s why we started in the UAE, in addition to having great support from the government. A big part of that is if we can solve it here , we can fix it anywhere,” he concluded.
© SalaamGateway.com 2022.all rights reserved
[ad_2]
Source link