West coast composting is soon to get bigger (but not smellier) after a recent round of funding.
WISErg Corporation, a Redmond, Washington-based bio-clean technology company converting food scraps into organic fertilizer, announced it is has secured $5 million in a Series B. The funds bring the company’s total capital raise to $7.75 million, and the investors for the latest round were undisclosed.
“It’s a very exciting time for WISErg, our investors and customers as we approach critical mass in making our technology more widely available,” WISErg CEO Larry LeSueur said in a statement. “We’ve proven the value of the Harvester system with our initial deployments, gotten great feedback from growers about the performance of our fertilizer and we’ve laid the foundation to scale our operations. We’re excited about the potential we see in the California market and the response we’ve received from logistics partners responsible for hauling operations within the California marketplace.”
The company says it will use these funds to accelerate its growth and expansion, and right now, that means installing its trademarked units called the “Harvester”.
Standing at about 7 feet tall, and a 4’ by 4’ base, the Harvester can hold up to 4,000 lbs. daily of scraps from the meat, seafood, deli and produce departments, according to the unit’s design specs. The unit is completely sealed, odor free, uses smart technology that tells the customer the sources of food scraps and environmental conditions, and uses a patent-pending oxidative conversion process to take out the valuable nutrients from food scraps. The Harvester then turns these nutrients into a natural agricultural fertilizer before they are wasted, and is sold to commercial farmers and to consumers at retail.
Several stores in the Pacific Northwest are sold on the idea. WISErg at regional and national grocery outlets like Whole Foods Market, Town & Country Markets, PCC Natural Markets and Red Apple Markets in the Puget Sound area of Washington. The company expects entering California later in 2014.
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FEATURED PHOTO: Taz/Flickr
