$1.8 Million Clean Farming Investment – Goal Holdings, Venture Capitalists
Vancouver, B.C. cleantech entrepreneurs are working at a convergence of several trends in food production. The first trend is increased awareness in consumer and food service markets of the negatives of importing food transported over long distances. Drawbacks include decreased freshness and nutrition value, fossil fuel use, and scant information on growing, harvesting, and packaging practices. Second, local agricultural production is outstripped by local demand. Third, B.C.'s growing season limits year-round employment in agriculture.
Perhaps the most important trend is local research and innovation focused on developing clean farming technologies and methods. The goal of creating efficient, sustainable, and continuous farming operations is leading to the establishment of new businesses providing local alternative food sources as an answer to heavy reliance on imported produce. Getting capital intensive businesses off the ground in turn leads to opportunities for venture capital investors following the growing Vancouver-area agri-science industry.
One Vancouver, B.C. clean farming business that sought venture capital investment to fund its plans is WaterWorking Wholesale Ltd. The company brings new agri-science technology to commercial-scale Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA). WaterWorking Wholesale Ltd. is a spin-off from the Simon Fraser University TIME incubator. TIME functions in part to connect academic researchers with promising ideas to venture capital investors in Vancouver.
The company employs CEA methods in greenhouses to remove variables like quality of sunlight and temperature from food production and provide precise control over variables like daylight hours and nutrients to promote optimum production. The company uses established hydroponics Nutrient Flow Technique (NFT) to circulate a flow of nutrient-laden water past the roots of crops. Systematic application of nutrients, light, temperature, and humidity create ideal growing conditions for high quality food crops year round. WaterWorking is adding proprietary, next generation innovations to the basic NFT process.
WaterWorking aims to produce local produce year-round to reduce the impact of produce transported from outside the region. The company believes buyers will respond to the idea of high quality, local crops with a short distance between producer and consumers. Quality-conscious consumers demand higher food safety standards of local producers.
WaterWorking recognizes the accountability required by being close to their target market and is introducing new technologies to answer food safety concerns. The operation integrates quality control processes that minimize pathogens associated with imported food crop production and processing. The founders also aim to increase year-round local farming employment.
Goal Holdings Group, a venture capital firm based in Vancouver, is investing $1.8 million in WaterWorking in the form of equity and infrastructure. The clean farming investment includes facilitating land and greenhouse infrastructure to house the operation. The WaterWorking project is the lead investment deal in Goal’s mandate to evaluate venture capital investments in the agri-science and cleantech farming sector.
The principals of Goal Holdings Group see increasing activity in the Vancouver, B.C. agri-science sector and strong future opportunities for businesses in the cleantech farming space. As the local population grows, the demand for local production and control of high quality, safe food year round in climates with limited growing seasons will increase.
The WaterWorking investment is the first stage of what Goal Holdings Group thinks has the potential to become a cluster of related clean farming businesses. The firm sees significant long-term benefits for Vancouver B.C. entrepreneurs and consumers in the establishment of a clean farming accelerator. Creating a center of excellence to commercialize farming innovation would enable farming innovators to build, prove, and scale sophisticated high tech farming techniques.
Goal Holdings Group is a Vancouver-based private angel and venture capital investment company specializing in venture capital gains.