Terviva develops pongamia-based products—oil and processed meal—for food, animal feed and renewable-fuel feedstock markets. The company has built an IP platform and patented processing that removes anti-nutritional components from pongamia meal, enabling feed and higher-margin human food applications; it expects to announce a manufacturing partnership soon. Terviva says its cultivars yield 35–40% oil and that crude pongamia oil can be converted into biodiesel, renewable diesel, or sustainable aviation fuel; it also sells pongamia oil through an ISCC-certified supply chain in India. The firm sources beans from India while building a domestic grower network and already has a few thousand acres planted between the US and Australia with plans to expand in other regions. Terviva positions pongamia as a low-input, drought-tolerant "second generation" feedstock that can grow on tier-two agricultural land and lower greenhouse-gas intensity per unit of oil. Founded in 2010, the company was started by Naveen Sikka, Maggie Kavalaris, Anne Slaughter and Joe Andrew. Terviva leverages natural, proprietary food-processing methods to create a golden-colored, buttery cooking oil and a highly soluble plant protein from pongamia tree beans. The company works with farmers to plant pongamia on idle or marginal agricultural land and emphasizes the tree’s sustainability, citing roughly 115 metric tons of carbon captured per acre over 30 years. Terviva plans to expand operations and commercial reach and will open a U.S. production facility in 2022. It is launching a collaboration with Danone to develop new food products that utilize pongamia oil and protein. Financially, the company has secured $78M in funding and expects to close an additional $24M in equity and debt capital this quarter toward that total. As part of the financing, Brace Young joined Terviva’s board. TerViva develops and sells patented, non-GMO high-yielding pongamia tree cultivars to farmers and commercializes the resulting beans for plant protein, high-oleic oil and livestock feed. Its pongamia varieties can produce as much as ten times the beans per acre as soy and are selected for high yields and hardy growth. Farmers partner with TerViva to plant pongamia on abandoned agricultural lands with little to no fertilizers or pesticides, and TerViva buys back the crop for processing. The company is planting its patented trees in Florida and Hawaii, including former sugar cane lands on Oahu, Kauai and Maui. TerViva intends to use new funding to accelerate research connecting pongamia bean functional properties to processing and product-development partnerships to demonstrate commercial viability. It also plans to grow infrastructure to supply farmers with its patented trees and support commercial-scale processing. TerViva grows pongamia, a perennial legume tree, and processes its output into vegetable oil and protein-rich animal feed. The company targets degraded or unproductive land as planting sites, positioning pongamia as a sustainable soybean alternative. TerViva reports pongamia can produce eight times more vegetable oil per acre, twice the protein animal feed per acre, and use one-tenth the water and chemicals versus soybean. It supplies growers with trees and planting support, leverages "drop-in infrastructure" so landowners can use existing equipment, and processes and distributes offtake to end users and distributors. The business develops proprietary technology including high-yielding cultivars, true-to-type tree production, and downstream product IP. TerViva operates projects across 150 acres in Florida and plans to expand to 250 acres in Hawaii within 12 months; it raised $2M in Series B to scale propagation, planting, and animal feed development.

Total raised

$100M

Funding rounds

4

Latest round

Equity

Latest activity

May 2021