8 December 2021
 

Agronomics Limited

("Agronomics" or the "Company")

Portfolio Company The EVERY Company Announces Oversubscribed US$ 175 million Series C Round

Agronomics, the leading listed investment company focused on the field of cellular agriculture, is pleased to announce portfolio company The EVERY Company ("EVERY", formerly Clara Foods Co.) has closed its oversubscribed US$127.5million Series C Round by raising a total of US$175 million. Agronomics participated in this round on the 4 November, when it announced its US$8 million investment and based on this revised Series C Round its investment will equate to an interest of 1.28%. This equates to an estimated portfolio weighting based on the Company's last reported Net Asset Value of 5.6%.

EVERY is a leading precision fermentation company with a key focus on the commercialisation of proteins traditionally derived from animals. Recently, EVERY launched the world's first animal-free egg protein and collaborated with the juice brand Pressed to produce smoothies containing their protein. This recent fundraise will help drive the scale up of its animal-free protein platform, so that EVERYs sustainable ingredients can have a worldwide reach.

The full announcement is set out below without any material changes:

The EVERY Company Closes Oversubscribed $175 Million Series C Round as it Drives Scale-up of its B2B Animal-Free Protein Platform

Capital to Fuel Rapid Nationwide Expansion into CPG and Foodservice Channels

San Francisco (December 7, 2021) - The EVERY Company, the leading precision fermentation platform accelerating a global transition to animal-free protein, today announced it has closed $175 million in Series C financing. The round was co-led by new investor, McWin, and existing investor, Rage Capital. Other new and existing investors joined the round including Temasek, Grosvenor's Wheatsheaf Group, and TO Ventures. Prosus Ventures also contributed to the funding, marking its first investment in synthetic biology.

Notably, the Series C round raised by EVERY™ (formerly Clara Foods) was heavily oversubscribed due to strong investor appetite to fill the growing supply gap for animal-free protein and ingredient solutions. "The global demand for alternative proteins has grown substantially, but the infrastructure needed to produce the necessary ingredients has yet to catch up. EVERY's platform is a big step towards filling that gap," said Katrin Burt, Managing Partner of Grosvenor's Wheatsheaf Group.

The Series C round brings EVERY's total funding to $233 million. EVERY™ will use the capital to scale production, commercialize a robust pipeline of animal-free protein products nationwide, and expand into a broad array of new food applications. EVERY™ will also continue to expand its protein production platform by mining the egg proteome for novel, hyper-functional proteins.

"It's rare for a company to credibly claim revolutionizing a century-old industry. Arturo and the team at EVERY™ are doing just that," said Gabriel Ruimy, Managing Partner of Rage Capital. "By leveraging precision fermentation technologies, EVERY™ is bringing ingredient synthesis from science fiction to supermarket aisles, starting with egg proteins and enzymes. We look forward to supporting the company in the commercialization of such exciting innovation in the next years."

EVERY™ has pioneered a disruptive advance in food technology by developing a platform that produces real animal proteins without the use of a single animal. Last year, it launched the world's first animal-free pepsin with Fortune 500 ingredients company, Ingredion. Most recently, it launched the world's first animal-free egg protein. In November, EVERY™ made its retail debut by announcing a limited time partnership with leading national cold-pressed juice brand Pressed to serve the world's first nature-equivalent animal-free protein smoothie directly to consumers for the first time.

"The restaurant industry is one of the early adopters of new food technologies and their introduction to the consumer. Given our deep roots in restaurants and as a prolific investor in the leading alternative protein companies, McWin is uniquely equipped to support EVERY's ambitious plans to bring its products to menus worldwide," said Henry McGovern, founder of McWin Food Ecosystem Fund and AmRest, which operates over 2,300 restaurants globally. "Eggs are not only ubiquitous, but they are also incredibly difficult to replace; we see tremendous potential in EVERY's revolutionary technology."

"There has never been a better time to be a B2B ingredients platform," said Arturo Elizondo, CEO & founder of The EVERY Company. "As the world's biggest food companies work to evolve their product offerings into the 21st century by driving for cleaner, kinder, and more sustainable labels, the options available are few and far between. We at EVERY™ are perfectly positioned to enable the world's largest and smallest food companies to transition to an animal-free future -- without compromises. Now, our major objective is to scale the platform to make good on our promise to bring our proteins to everyone, everywhere. This new injection of capital will allow us to do just that."

Proteins by EVERY™ are distributed globally by Ingredion, a Fortune 500 ingredients solutions company. Those interested in sourcing animal-free proteins or needing a sample for commercial use can contact sales@theEVERYcompany.com or visit theEVERYcompany.com.

About The Every Company

The EVERY Company, headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, is a market leader in engineering, manufacturing and formulating animal-free, animal proteins as ingredients for the global food and beverage industry. Originally founded as Clara Foods in 2014, EVERY rebranded in 2021 to better convey its vision to bring animal-free proteins to everyone, everywhere. EVERY is a team of passionate changemakers who are reimagining the factory farm model with a more sustainable and kinder alternative. Leveraging precision fermentation to produce super-functional and one-to-one replacement proteins from microorganisms, EVERY is on a mission to decouple the world's proteins from the animals that make them. The EVERY Company's Press Kit can be found here.

About Agronomics

Agronomics is a leading listed alternative proteins company with a focus on cellular agriculture and cultivated meat. The Company has established a portfolio of 18 companies at the Pre-Seed to Series C stage in this rapidly advancing sector. It seeks to secure minority stakes in companies owning technologies with defensible intellectual property that offer new ways of producing food and materials with a focus on products historically derived from animals. These technologies are driving a major disruption in agriculture, offering solutions to improve sustainability, as well as addressing human health, animal welfare and environmental damage. This disruption will decouple supply chains from the environment and animals, as well as being fundamental to feeding the world's expanding population. A full list of Agronomics' portfolio companies is available at https://agronomics.im/.

About Cellular Agriculture

Cellular Agriculture is the production of agriculture products directly from cells, as opposed to raising an animal for slaughter, or growing crops. This encompasses cell culture to produce cultivated meat and materials, and fermentation processes that harness a combination of molecular biology, synthetic biology, tissue engineering and biotechnology to massively simplify production methods in a sustainable manner.

Over the coming decades, the source of the world's food supply traditionally derived from conventional agriculture is going to change dramatically. We have already witnessed the first wave of this shift with the consumer adoption of plant-based alternative proteins but today, we are on the cusp of an even bigger wave of change. This is being facilitated by advances in cellular agriculture. This change is necessary, given scientists claims that if we maintain existing animal protein consumption patterns, then we will not meet the Paris Agreement's goal of limiting warming to 1.5℃

AT Kearney, a global consultancy firm, projects that cultivated meat's market share will reach 35% by 2040. This combined with the Good Food Institute's estimate that a US $1.8 trillion investment will be required in order to produce just 10% of the world's protein using this technology, means that we are on the cusp of a multi-decade flow of capital to build out manufacturing facilities. Funding in the field of cellular agriculture is accelerating, however still less than US$ 1 billion has been invested worldwide since the industry's inception in 2016.

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