African Agritech Releaf Secures $3.3m Pre-series A Funding
African Agritech Releaf Secures $3.3m Pre-series A Funding. African agritech startup Releaf has announced that it has secured $3.3 million in an oversubscribed Pre-Series A funding round to launch a portable version of Kraken, the company’s award-winning palm nut de-sheller and SITE, a geospatial mapping application that informs the most profitable positioning of food processing assets.
Co-founder of Releaf Ikenna Nzewi said, “These technologies are the next steps in our plan to fundamentally transform the efficiency of agricultural supply chains in Africa and we are excited to have partnered with an exceptional cohort of investors and collaborators to roll them out. With Africa’s population projected to represent 40% of the human population by the end of the century, the fast moving consumer goods market will emerge as the continent’s first globally relevant industrial sector. Our technology is accelerating one of the greatest economic opportunities globally while ensuring inclusive results for the planet, farmers, food factories, and consumers.”
Releaf is a supply chain technology company that supplies ingredients to African Food Factories. The company is on a mission to build climate-adaptive supply chains as Africa’s population increases by 3 billion. It is starting by making vegetable oil cheaper and supplying it to Nigerian Food Factories. Releaf also provides smallholders with extension services, serves as an off-taker of their produce, and processes the raw material into factory-grade inputs for vegetable oil factories.
Kraken II is a portable, lower-cost version of Kraken – West Africa’s most advanced palm nut de-sheller and SITE is a geospatial mapping application that uses cutting-edge to inform the most profitable positioning of food processing assets. Since the company launched its maiden Kraken in 2021, it has processed more than 10 million kilograms of palm nuts and grown its monthly revenue 7X year on year. It has also secured more than $100 million in supply contracts from leading consumer goods manufacturers. Releaf wants to replicate this success across Nigeria and the rest of Africa and these new technologies are the next steps in its plan to fundamentally transform the efficiency of agricultural supply chains in Africa.
