9 June 2023, Bengaluru, India
The global coffee market is projected to be worth $493 billion. Along with the established producers you see in the coffee aisle, newer, smaller businesses have emerged. The most recent venture capital funding I covered was Chamberlain Coffee, which now joins firms like Fellow and Blank Street as well as other well-known coffee brands. Even now, businesses like Compound Foods and Atomo produce coffee without using conventional beans.
Green Coffee, a consolidated arabica coffee farming firm with its headquarters in the United States and activities in Colombia that cover 9,000 acres across 14 farms, was established in 2017 by Cole Shephard. Additionally, Shepherd claimed that the company is larger than any other coffee grower in the nation by more than a factor of two thanks to the ownership of more than 11.5 million coffee trees.
We began as an asset management product, but after two years, Shepherd claimed, “We were running the company.” There is a huge possibility for Colombian businesses to expand internationally, but nobody was making use of it. Others lacked financial or human resources, and nobody was making investments in the industry.
The business now has a sizable operation and manages the entire supply chain, from production to direct commerce with end consumers. According to Shephard, it uses innovative processing equipment in its wet mills that recycle water so that each pound of green coffee only requires 0.3 liters of water as opposed to the 20 litres it typically needs.
According to Shephard, Green Coffee generated $10 million in revenue last year, up from just $1 million the year before. In a year, he projects that figure to reach $27 million.
Shephard is a partner of the Latin American investment firm Legacy Group, which manages the portfolio company Green Coffee. According to Shephard, Green Coffee receives its finance, including the Series C, through a network of over 450 high-net-worth investors that put their money directly into the portfolio companies that Legacy Group consults as opposed to a pooled fund. Over $60 million has been invested in the company by investors altogether.
The company will use the money raised from the funding round to increase the size of its farming operations in Colombia, speed up its Houston, Texas, coffee roasting operations over the coming year, and launch a line of distilled liquors and spirits made from coffee byproducts like coffee cherries and other coffee “waste.” The business is currently searching for institutional debt funding of $65 million to carry out its development plans.
While waiting for this to happen, Shepherd expects that Green Coffee will “become the world’s largest producer of arabica coffee in the next two years.” He also intends to leave through a US IPO in 2026.
We’re constructing a huge distillery in Colombia to generate our pure ethanol, and Shephard claimed that by using 25% of the byproducts, it will be possible to produce 5–6 million bottles of vodka annually.
[Source of Information: Techcrunch.com]
