TIDMANIC
Agronomics Limited
06 October 2022
6 October 2022
Agronomics Limited
("Agronomics" or the "Company")
Portfolio Company VitroLabs Appoints Anthony Chow and Martin
Avetisyan to its Board of Directors
Agronomics (AIM:ANIC), the leading listed company focused on the
field of cellular agriculture, is pleased to announce that
Agronomics Co-founder and investment advisor, Anthony Chow, has
been appointed to the board of directors for VitroLabs Inc.
("VitroLabs"). VitroLabs is the Bay-Area based biotechnology
company focused on producing leather via its innovative and unique
cell culture process. Its technology utilises a tissue engineering
process to create genuine hides directly from animal cells for
leather products. The global luxury leather goods market is a US$
48 billion opportunity and, following its product development
partnership with Kering, VitroLabs is set to become the world's
first company to commercialise cultivated leather.
Agronomics holds 2,683,894 shares in VitroLabs, representing an
equity ownership of 11.2% on a fully diluted basis following its
investments in September 2021 , February 2020 and October 2019.
Agronomics currently carries this position in its accounts at an
unaudited book value of US$ 12.8 million, representing an
unrealised gain on cost of US$ 2.25 million. Based on the last
unaudited Net Asset Value ("NAV") as at 30 June 2022, the VitroLabs
position represents 7.1% of NAV.
The full announcement is set out below without any material
changes:
VitroLabs Appoints Anthony Chow and Martin Avetisyan to its
Board of Directors
Lance Kizer joins company as new Chief Technology Officer
[Milpitas, California-October 5, 2022] VitroLabs Inc, the
California based biotech company leading the commercialization of
cell cultivated animal leather, announces the appointment of two
new members to its Board of Directors-Anthony Chow, Co-Founder of
Agronomics; and Martin Avetisyan, Chief Growth Officer and member
of the Executive Board at FARFETCH. Chow and Avetisyan join
VitroLabs CEO & Co-Founder Ingvar Helgason to form the
three-person Board. Together, they bring expertise in developing
new biotechnologies in cell therapeutics and cellular agriculture,
as well as global growth, acquisition, and expansion in luxury, to
the company. In May, VitroLabs announced its long-standing product
development partnership with Kering and closing its series A
funding round, raising $46 million to date.
VitroLabs also recently appointed Lance Kizer, former Co-Founder
and Chief Science Officer at Cana Technologies, to its executive
team as Chief Technology Officer. With extensive experience scaling
products for commercialization in the foodtech, industrial
biochemical, and synthetic biology spaces, Kizer will lead
VitroLabs' R&D team in driving product development and scale up
to bring the world's first cell cultivated leather to market.
"I am extremely pleased to have such a strong leadership team at
the helm at VitroLabs. Lance, Anthony, and Martin's unique
backgrounds bring a strong addition of product development, scaling
commercialization, growing biotech innovations, and developing
businesses in luxury to the company. We are now better positioned
than ever before to meet our ambitious goals as we enter the next
chapter," says CEO & Co-Founder Ingvar Helgason. "Brands today
want the nobility and functionality of real leather, but with less
impact on the planet," Helgason adds. "Our team has been deep in
R&D to come up with just the solution needed-a true leather
replacement that changes the source of leather without changing
leather itself. Within the foreseeable future, we are ushering in a
new generation of real animal leather that is luxurious, bespoke,
and made without the heavy and unsustainable toll on our
planet."
About Anthony Chow
Anthony Chow is a co-founder of Agronomics, a leading investor
in cellular agriculture, and has worked closely with UHNW investor,
Jim Mellon, investing in early-stage opportunities with a focus on
biotechnology and pharma for over 13 years. He serves as a Board
member of several companies in the field of cellular agriculture
including SuperMeat, VitroLabs, Formo, Onego, and California
Cultured; and is a board observer of Meatable and Solar Foods.
About Martin Avetisyan
Martin Avetisyan is a serial entrepreneur, growth executive, and
tech investor. He is the Chief Growth Officer and Executive Board
Member at FARFETCH. Being a true material science enthusiast,
Martin is thrilled to serve on VitroLabs' Board of Directors,
bringing extensive experience accelerating global growth through
operations as well as architecting strategic partnerships around
the world. He was previously the founder and CEO at iMall, an
awardwinning fashion marketplace, which was acquired by Farfetch in
2015.
About Lance Kizer
Lance Kizer is an experienced founder with a demonstrated
history of successfully scaling big ideas into reality for
start-ups in the synthetic biology, industrial biochemical, and
foodtech industries. As Co-Founder and CSO of Cana Technologies,
Lance led the development of a technology to reconstruct on-demand
any beverage in a home consumer electronic device using a universal
flavor chemistry, enabling a novel method of distributing beverages
with lower environmental impact and no single-use packaging. Part
of the founding team and Vice President of Research and Development
at Ripple Foods, which was founded to drive the adoption of more
sustainable products in the consumer packaged goods space, Lance
led the successful build out of the company, development of a novel
protein production process, and national launches of several
plant-based dairy products that scaled into a food brand with
multiple product lines available in thousands of stores
nationwide.
Before starting up Ripple, Lance led research and development
projects at Amyris, Inc. where he scaled and commercialized
biochemicals produced via fermentation processes. Product
highlights include an antimalarial compound that is now used to
make more than 100 million treatments annually and sustainable
cosmetic ingredient alternatives that were Amyris' first profitable
product lines. Lance earned his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at
the University of California, Berkeley where he specialized in
applying systems biology to microbial strains engineered to produce
value added chemicals from sugar feedstocks.
About Ingvar Helgason
Where fashion, technology, and sustainability intersect, you
will find venture-backed VitroLabs and its Founder & CEO,
Ingvar Helgason. Originally from Reykjavik, Iceland, Ingvar's first
venture, Ostwald Helgason, was a fashion brand that he co-founded
in 2006 and scaled to distribution in 23 countries worldwide. Being
drawn to the technology side of the fashion industry, he went on to
co-found WOAH, a cloud ERP platform for apparel companies, helping
500+ brands and manufacturers speed up processes, reduce waste, and
improve profitability. WOAH was sold in 2018. Ingvar's commitment
to sustainability and belief that biotech companies have the
opportunity to lead the way in changing how companies produce
materials and build supply chains is the foundation upon which
VitroLabs' mission stemmed. The company is supported by investors
including Kering, Leonardo DiCaprio, Khosla Ventures, and
Agronomics; and has received recognition in top-tier press outlets
including Vogue Business, Vogue Italia, BBC, The Business of
Fashion, Bloomberg News, and Forbes.
About VitroLabs
VitroLabs, founded in 2016 and headquartered in Milpitas,
California, is a biotech company developing a scalable tissue
engineering platform for the efficient and environmentally friendly
production of leather from only a few cells. Combining advanced
tissue engineering processes with proprietary advances to achieve
commercial scale, VitroLabs is on a mission to produce cell
cultivated leather that achieves the look, feel and performance of
traditional leather without compromise. The cultivated leather
process involves taking a one-time collection of cells from an
animal, which then grows in a nutrient-rich environment. Without
ever going back to the animal again, the cells grow, divide, and
form into tissue. The composition of the material achieves the
complexity of traditional hides, containing a variety of proteins
that make up a durable and luxurious material when finished, but
without the need to go to animals as an ongoing source of hides.
The process is more environmentally sustainable and favorable for
animal welfare than that which is used to produce traditional
leather. For more information, visit www.vitrolabsinc.com.
About Agronomics
Agronomics is a leading listed alternative proteins company with
a focus on cellular agriculture and cultivated meat. The Company
has established a portfolio of 24 companies at the Pre-Seed to
Series C stage in this rapidly advancing sector. It seeks to secure
minority stakes in companies owning technologies with defensible
intellectual property that offer new ways of producing food and
materials with a focus on products historically derived from
animals. These technologies are driving a major disruption in
agriculture, offering solutions to improve sustainability, as well
as addressing human health, animal welfare and environmental
damage. This disruption will decouple supply chains from the
environment and animals, as well as being fundamental to feeding
the world's expanding population. A full list of Agronomics'
portfolio companies is available at https://agronomics.im/ .
About Cellular Agriculture
Cellular Agriculture is the production of agriculture products
directly from cells, as opposed to raising an animal for slaughter,
or growing crops. This encompasses cell culture to produce
cultivated meat and materials, and fermentation processes that
harness a combination of molecular biology, synthetic biology,
tissue engineering and biotechnology to massively simplify
production methods in a sustainable manner.
Over the coming decades, the source of the world's food supply
traditionally derived from conventional agriculture is going to
change dramatically. We have already witnessed the first wave of
this shift with the consumer adoption of plant-based alternative
proteins but today, we are on the cusp of an even bigger wave of
change. This is being facilitated by advances in cellular
agriculture. This change is necessary, given scientists claims that
if we maintain existing animal protein consumption patterns, then
we will not meet the Paris Agreement's goal of limiting warming to
1.5
AT Kearney, a global consultancy firm, projects that cultivated
meat's market share will reach 35% by 2040. This combined with the
Good Food Institute's estimate that a US $1.8 trillion investment
will be required in order to produce just 10% of the world's
protein using this technology, means that we are on the cusp of a
multi-decade flow of capital to build out manufacturing facilities.
Funding in the field of cellular agriculture is accelerating,
however still less than US$ 4 billion has been invested worldwide
since the industry's inception in 2016.
For further information please contact:
Agronomics Beaumont Canaccord Cenkos Securities Peterhouse TB Cardew
Limited Cornish Genuity Plc Capital
Limited Limited Limited
The Company Nomad Joint Joint Broker Joint Public Relations
Broker Broker
========== ============== =================== =============== ========================
Richard Reed Roland Andrew Giles Balleny Lucy Williams Ed Orlebar
Denham Eke Cornish Potts Max Gould Charles Alistair Walker
James Harry Michael Johnson Goodfellow
Biddle Rees
Alex Aylen
(Head
of Equities)
========== ============== =================== =============== ========================
+44 (0) 20 7930
0777
+44 (0) 1624 +44 (0) +44 (0) +44 (0) +44 (0) 7738
639396 207 628 207 523 +44 (0) 207 207 469 724 630
info@agronomics.im 3396 8000 397 8900 0936 agronomics@tbcardew.com
========== ============== =================== =============== ========================
This information is provided by Reach, the non-regulatory press
release distribution service of RNS, part of the London Stock
Exchange. Terms and conditions relating to the use and distribution
of this information may apply. For further information, please
contact rns@lseg.com or visit www.rns.com.
Reach is a non-regulatory news service. By using this service an
issuer is confirming that the information contained within this
announcement is of a non-regulatory nature. Reach announcements are
identified with an orange label and the word "Reach" in the source
column of the News Explorer pages of London Stock Exchange's
website so that they are distinguished from the RNS UK regulatory
service. Other vendors subscribing for Reach press releases may use
a different method to distinguish Reach announcements from UK
regulatory news.
RNS may use your IP address to confirm compliance with the terms
and conditions, to analyse how you engage with the information
contained in this communication, and to share such analysis on an
anonymised basis with others as part of our commercial services.
For further information about how RNS and the London Stock Exchange
use the personal data you provide us, please see our Privacy
Policy.
END
NRABKPBQNBDDDKK
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 06, 2022 02:00 ET (06:00 GMT)
Grafico Azioni Port Erin (LSE:PEBI)
Storico
Da Mag 2024 a Giu 2024
Grafico Azioni Port Erin (LSE:PEBI)
Storico
Da Giu 2023 a Giu 2024