NewLeaf Symbiotics, a St Louis, Missouri-based agricultural biotechnology company focused on the commercialization of beneficial plant bacteria, announced today that it has closed a $17 million Series B round of financing. The proceeds will be used to further accelerate its successful R&D program, ramp up production from pilot to commercial scale, and go to market with its first biological products. Otter Capital led the round and was joined by existing investors RockPort Capital, Open Prairie Ventures and Pangaea Ventures. NewLeaf closed a $7 Million Series A round in January 2013.
“We have made huge strides on the discovery side and have filed over 20 patents since inception” said Stephen Kahn, Senior VP and CFO of NewLeaf. “We are rapidly expanding our Prescriptive Biologics™ platform and are developing a deep pipeline of commercial product candidates. NewLeaf is now poised to bring natural bacteria-based seed and foliar products to growers”.
Otter Capital Founder John Pasquesi is impressed with NewLeaf’s highly professional team and the significant progress made in a relatively short time. “I am a big believer in the future of biologicals as an alternative or supplement to conventional agriculture inputs and GMO technologies”, Pasquesi commented. “This technology could represent one of the major breakthroughs in agriculture in the next few years.”
Daniel Hullah of RockPort Capital added, “We are thrilled to have John and Otter Capital as a co-investor and partner to help NewLeaf bring its industry leading technology platform to the marketplace.”
This is the third agtech investment this year for Otter Capital, which recently invested alongside Khosla Ventures in a $15 million funding round for BioConsortia, and in August led a $6 million Series B round in Green and Grow.
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