WISErg offers the Harvester, a self-contained digester installed at grocery stores that accepts almost any food (including meat and fish), extracts remaining nutrients, stabilizes the solution and transfers it to regional facilities for conversion into liquid fertilizer. At its Washington facility the waste is transformed into a 100% water-soluble fertilizer approved for organic crop production; the company says its patented cold process removes pathogens without heat or pasteurization and yields more readily available nitrogen than other organic fertilizers. WISErg sold 1.5 million gallons of fertilizer in 2017 (a 300% increase over 2016); its Seattle operation includes 14 harvesters that produce four million gallons per year. The company plans to build a second facility in California to serve growers in California, Arizona and Mexico and to eye expansion into Central and South America; the California site is expected to produce up to nine million gallons per year. About half of the new funding will go toward building and staffing the new facility and the other half toward developing new fertilizer products; a facility producing four to nine million gallons annually costs under $6 million to build. Shipping is the company’s largest operating cost, so WISErg is locating production near growers and timing production with the growing season to minimize storage and transport costs, and it says it has plans to be national. WISErg provides grocery stores and food-service operators with its Harvester machine, which extracts and stabilizes nutrients from expired produce, prepared foods, meat, and fish for transport to regional facilities. At its facilities the company transforms that material into a 100% water-soluble liquid fertilizer approved for organic crop production and usable with common application equipment. The Harvester also generates data-driven reports to help stores reduce waste and save money. WISErg says its patented process yields more readily available nitrogen than other organic fertilizers and reduces odors, pests, and greenhouse-gas emissions versus landfilling. The company has contracted pilots and tests with customers including Whole Foods, Red Apple, PCC and various restaurants and food vendors. Founded in 2009 by ex‑Microsoft employees Larry LeSueur and Jose Lugo, WISErg is planning a follow-on raise in the near term. WISErg, led by CEO and founder Larry LeSueur with co-founder Jose Lugo and VP of Sales Chris Creighton, operates out of Redmond, Washington. The company intercepts nutrients from food before they become waste and converts that material into organic fertilizer via a patent-pending oxidative conversion process. Its customers include grocery stores and restaurants, from which it collects food waste for processing. WISErg plans to use new funds to scale operations beyond Washington State and to increase fertilizer production capacity. The company will continue agricultural tests across additional crop types, soils, geographies and crop management practices, and will further efforts on data analytics. The business model centers on waste diversion and nutrient recovery to produce value-added fertilizer products. WISErg produces the Harvester, a 4' x 7' steel food-recycling unit that liquefies meat, seafood, deli, and produce scraps and sends the material to WISErg's facility to be processed into organic fertilizer. The Harvester uses a patent-pending oxidative conversion process and treats liquified scraps with enzymes and other organic materials, while workers enter department codes so the unit also captures inventory data. WISErg's units are deployed in Puget Sound grocery stores including Whole Foods Market, Town & Country Markets, PCC Natural Markets, and Red Apple Markets, and the resulting fertilizer is sold to commercial farmers and retail customers. The Harvester is positioned as an alternative to traditional composters, offering sealed, technology-enabled processing and actionable waste data for grocers. The company says it will invest new capital to develop the Harvester's technology and expand marketing operations, and plans to expand into California later this year. The CEO, Larry LeSueur, highlighted that roughly 80% of food scraps currently end up in landfills, underscoring the product's sustainability focus.

Total raised

$48M

Funding rounds

4

Latest round

Series C

Latest activity

Jan 2018