Agricool, a French agri-tech start-up rising contemporary produce in a managed indoor setting, is in search of a purchaser after calling in receivers.
Guillaume Fourdinier, the founder and CEO of Paris-based Agricool, filed paperwork in January with the Industrial Courtroom of Bobigny, which has frozen the corporate’s debt and opened a six-month remark duration to spot a purchaser by means of 31 July.
Fourdinier arrange the trade in 2015, cultivating contemporary herbs, leafy vegetables and strawberries in recycled transport bins identified within the vertical-farming trade as cooltainers. He was once keen to chop the time to marketplace and supply brisker and pesticide-free produce to shoppers in native proximity to his rising websites within the Paris suburbs of L. a. Courneuve and Courbevoie.
Agricool’s programs use 90% much less water and vitamins than typical farming tactics, and in any other environmental benefit, use totally renewable power resources.
French large Danone has invested within the trade, participating in a US$28m funding spherical in 2020 by way of its mission capital arm, Danone Manifesto Ventures.
Chatting with Simply Meals in 2020, Fourdinier stated Agricool had gained EUR30m (US$32.9m nowadays) in general financing as he emphasized the capital-intensive nature of managed indoor farming.
Alternatively, the court docket paperwork supplied by means of Fourdinier to this e-newsletter pointed to that facet within the receivership procedure.
“The declaration of cessation of bills was once motivated by means of an inadequate turnover to finance the prime structural prices function of start-ups, principally related to the prices generated by means of investments in R&D and the loss of volumes important to succeed in an working steadiness.”
The court docket additionally famous Agricool was once the topic of a cyberattack in 2020, leading to “operational and fiscal penalties”. And “the failure of negotiations geared toward sporting out the fourth spherical of fundraising, which is very important to proceed financing building”.
It additionally stated Agricool has EUR4.1m in belongings however general liabilities of EUR6.3m, with the court docket including the corporate employs 64 body of workers.
Fourdinier informed Simply Meals in 2020: “It’s numerous effort and cash and funding to make it winning. We’re principally inventing a brand new trade. That is one thing that may exchange the following 100 years of agriculture however it is going to take time needless to say.”
See Simply Meals’s research right here: Indoor farming and the potentialities for profitability
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