AgroUrbana, a Chilean vertical farming company, raised a pre-series B of US$ 6 million led by ALB investments. Co-founders Pablo Bunster and Cristían Sjogrens have multiplied their production by four ever since 2022, and by 2025 they are aiming to multiply it by five. "In three years we are going to multiply our production 20 times," says Cristían.
"Today we're entering a new stage with new partners, expanding our Quilicura facility by five times the current capacity and incorporating new technologies to reach more Chileans with our amazing vegetables," shares Cristian Sjogren, CEO of AgroUrbana.
Continuing his excitement he shares, "It has been 6 years since we started AgroUrbana. It is impossible to condense the whole story in a note, as it is more like writing a book. It has not been easy given so many things have happened, but they have all added up to bring out the best in the team. Let's go AgroUrbana and let's go Urban Rabbit."
AgroUrbana is currently present in large chains such as Aramark, Tavelli and Castaño and sell to Bidasoa, Baco, Happening, Pinpilinpausha and others. AgroUrbana let know that they are at their maximum capacity and now, they emphasize, comes the acid test: scaling the business. Of the 4,000 m2 they occupy 400 and in the coming months they will fill the entire land with lettuce forests: it will be equivalent to 20 hectares, in a market that has at least 7 thousand cultivated hectares. Today they sell 60 tons a year and hope that, like their lettuce, the growth will be vertical.
Cristían says that Silicon Valley investors saw the technology and many firms took advantage of the moment to dress as 100% technological firms in a trillion-dollar market. "Our discourse has always been: we are farmers, technology supports what we are doing. In the market we have a correction, there will finally be those who look at this as an operational business, not as a technology business."
ALB investments, a family office of the sisters Anita and Loreto Briones, and where the president of the Stock Exchange Juan Andrés Camus, Amarena, Maximiliano Ibáñez also entered (Córpora) and the previous investors subscribed. The deal was advised by ACU Abogados and the Echeverría Ilharreborde firm.
Stay tuned for an interview with the co-founders...
Source: DFMAS