Rimonim Agro Fund announced its 4th investment in Post-Harvest company - Sufresca.

The newest investment of the Rimonim Fund is its first move in the post-harvest arena. In this investment, Rimonim is looking downstream the Agri supply chain aiming to develop a solutions that tackle the urgent issue of food waste.

Sufresca is an Israeli Agtech start-up, Founded by  Prof. Amos Nussinovitch of The Hebrew University in Jerusalem in collaboration with Prof. Haim Rabinowitch and Dr. Yoni Elkind, developing a technology which enables coating fruits and vegetables that so far had no market available solution, and extend their shelf life by additional several weeks (!).

Sufresca, a technology developed in the Agriculture Faculty in Rehovot, was licensed by the Agrinnovation, the Agricultural Venture Capital of The Hebrew University, which brought the technology to a full POC and positive market acceptance.

In the Fruit & vegetable supply chain, 25-80% of harvested fresh produce are lost due to spoilage.

Over a third of the global food production ends up into waste, estimated at 1.3 Bn Metric Tones amounting roughly to US$ 1 trillion. Such huge amount is primarily generated due to an insufficient storage facility and small shelf life of fresh produce. A solution to this problem is the use of edible films and coatings, which now been widely used by the major food producers.

“Sufresca developed a GARS (Generally Recognized as Safe) coating layer which extend shelf life, prevents losses, while allowing continuation of the metabolism, required to maintain freshness and nutritional value of fruits and vegetables”. Said Dr. Ido Schechter, CEO of Agrinnovation Fund.

Rimonim Agro, one of Israel’s top Agritech Venture Capital Funds, is a specialists managed fund that invests in early and mid-stage Israeli Agtech and Foodtech companies, developing technologies that address the unmet need of the global food shortage.

Rimonim’s highly experienced team, which has worked together for many years, has successfully guided companies from early stage to trade sale or listing. According to Yigal Galli, co-founder and Managing Partner of Rimonim Fund: "Many Israeli AgriTech companies have great technologies but look for additional expertise to reach their potential. We help  companies by direct participation in management to move from early stage to Series A and beyond."

Across the value chain, two of the high growth areas on which Rimonim focuses are: Precision Agriculture and Ag Biotechnology. -. This includes technologies relating to analytics, , robotics, urban vertical farming, spraying;  a-biotic stress, crop protection, breeding and post harvesting.

Rimonim, is now raising its second vehicle, Rimonim II. Targeting to invest up to $100m with the investment strategy, already implemented in Rimonim 1 .

"We are looking for the 10 most compelling Israeli Agr-Tech, companies with internationally scalable technologies that  can play a key role in resolving the world’s food shortage issues." says Dr Michal Devir, co-founder and managing partner of Rimonim Fund.