8^th September 2022
 

Agronomics Limited

("Agronomics" or the "Company")

Portfolio Company Bond Pet Foods Completes Series A Financing to Scale Nutritionally Complete Meat Proteins

Agronomics (AIM:ANIC), the leading listed company focused on the field of cellular agriculture, is pleased to announce that portfolio company Bond Pet Foods, Inc ("Bond Pet Foods"), engaged in the production of meat proteins through precision fermentation for pet food applications, has completed its Series A financing round, raising US$ 17.5 million. 

Agronomics invested in Bond Pet Foods in September 2019, with a US$ 150k investment in the form of a convertible promissory note ("CPN"). The CPN has now converted into 531,692 Series A Preferred Shares, representing an equity ownership of 1.85%. Subject to audit, Agronomics will now carry this position at a book value of US$ 933k, representing an unrealised gain on cost of US$ 783k. This provides a multiple on invested capital (MOIC) of 6.22 and an internal rate of return (IRR) of 84% on the initial investment.

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

Bond Pet Foods Closes $17.5MM in Series A Funding to Scale Nutritionally Complete Meat Proteins Produced Through Precision Fermentation

Company breaks ground on new 15,000 sq. ft. facility

BOULDER, Colo., September 8, 2022  -- Bond Pet Foods, the Boulder-based company creating meat proteins through fermentation for pet food applications, announced today that it has completed its Series A fundraise totaling $17.5 million.

The oversubscribed round includes investment from global food and agriculture pioneers ADM Ventures (Archer Daniels Midland Company) and Cavallo Ventures (Wilbur Ellis); institutional funds Genoa Ventures and Lever VC; food/tech and sustainability investors Thia Ventures, iSelect Fund, Stage 1 Fund, Lifely VC and Satori Capital, as well as music icons Sia Isabelle Furler and Joan Jett.

The funding will be used to expand Bond's meat protein portfolio and scale up production at a new 15,000 square foot facility in central Boulder. The Series A will also allow Bond to more than triple the size of its team, strengthening its science, technical and regulatory competency.

"We're excited to be a part of this next chapter of Bond Pet Foods' growth," said Jorge Martinez, President, Pet Solutions for ADM. "Pet nutrition, with industry sales at $100 billion and growing at 4.5% a year, is an important growth pillar for ADM.  More and more, consumers demand their pets eat the same sustainable, responsibly - produced food that they themselves eat, and proteins produced by precision fermentation are key to being part of the future of the industry.  We've expanded our capabilities in these categories and are proud to be part of the Bond Pet Foods journey, as they offer new opportunities to bring these growth trends together."

Bond Pet Foods was founded in 2017 with a mission to create more sustainable, responsible, and humane food by reimagining meat, the mainstay of our pets' diets. Dogs and cats are voracious consumers of animal proteins. However, studies show that the production of meat and meat by-products for their consumption has an oversized impact on the environment: if America's 163 million dogs and cats were their own country, their consumption of meat products would rank fifth in the world, and up to 30% of meat production's negative effects (land, water, energy use) can be attributed to satiating this demand.

Bond is solving for this by employing precision fermentation to produce nutritionally complete, nature-identical chicken, beef, fish and other meat proteins for pet food applications. Bond's production process is safe and established, similar to that routinely used to make common food ingredients such as lactic acid, vitamin B12 and enzymes for cheese production- no animal farming required.

"The company's recent achievements on strain development and cost, as well as their expanding relationships with global strategic partners, have validated Bond's technology platform and their ability to usher in a new era of responsible protein for our pets," said Jenny Rooke, Managing Director of Genoa Ventures. "We're bullish about Bond's approach and their potential to change the pet food supply chain for the better."

"We're thrilled to welcome this diverse, world-class coalition of investors into the Bond family," added Rich Kelleman, CEO and Co-Founder of Bond Pet Foods. "With their support we'll be able to take our work to the next level, developing and scaling a variety of meat proteins for our valued partners in the pet food space."

Prior to this Series A round, Bond raised $2.5MM from investors including Lever VC, Agronomics, KBW Ventures, Plug and Play Ventures and Trellis Road, bringing its total funding to-date to $20MM. In November of last year Bond also announced an industry-first partnership with Hill's Pet Nutrition, to develop a craft meat protein for its product portfolio.

ABOUT BOND PET FOODS

Bond Pet Foods is a Boulder, Colorado-based company using biotechnology to create meat proteins that are nutritionally comparable to their conventional counterparts but without all the bad stuff- so people, pets, farm animals and the planet all win. Using some of the same processes that are employed in craft brewing, Bond produces high-quality animal proteins through fermentation, harvests them to better meet the nutritional requirements of companion animals, and supplies the ingredients to manufacturers for pet food, treat and supplement applications.

For more information on Bond's technology and team visit bondpets.com or follow @bondpetfoods on Instagram, Linkedin and Twitter.

MEDIA CONTACT
Heather Krug

Corporate Communications
press@bondpets.com

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 24 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 $1.8 trillion investment will be required in order to produce just 10% of the world's protein using this technology, means that we are on the cusp of a multi-decade flow of capital to build out manufacturing facilities. Funding in the field of cellular agriculture is accelerating, however still less than US$ 4 billion has been invested worldwide since the industry's inception in 2016.

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