South Korean Agritech E Green Global Secures Investment from ADB Ventures to Enhance Asia-Pacific Food Security

SEOUL, South Korea, Dec. 8, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Advanced crop technology company E Green Global Co. Ltd. (EGG) announced today that it has raised additional equity funding from ADB Ventures, the venture capital arm of the Asian Development Bank (ADB). EGG has secured $15M Series B funding in total, including an investment from the YD-SK-KDB Social Value Fund, to scale its agri-biotech platform for the potato industry.

Potatoes are the world's fourth-largest food resource. Potato farmers, however, often lack access to quality seed potatoes, resulting in significantly lower and more volatile yields. Traditional seed potato production is costly, limited to one or two harvests a year and is prone to diseases, weather conditions, and climate impacts. As a result, less than 10% of the global potato seed supply is certified good quality and disease-free.

EGG has developed the world's first platform for successfully producing high-quality lab-grown seed potatoes (Microtubers) at commercial scale. EGG uses patented tissue culture technology to mass produce and continually harvest disease-free Microtubers throughout the year in bio-secured plant factories. The Microtubers are machine-planted directly in the field to produce the seed potatoes at a much lower cost, with higher productivity, and in a significantly shorter time span compared to any other conventional method.

This game-changing breakthrough was recognized in September this year when EGG won the prestigious PotatoEurope's Golden Innovation Award in recognition of the company's innovation and widespread impact in the potato market.

"EGG is the first company that effectively enables 'Lab to Farm' commercial seed potato production on a global scale. We believe that EGG's Microtubers technology can supercharge efficiency for potato farmers and processors by enabling faster, better, and cheaper crops in Asia-Pacific and across the $144 billion global potato market," said Minsoo Kim, ADB Ventures Investment Specialist.

Now, after working with some of the largest potato producers and processors across China and North America, EGG is leveraging its partnership with ADB Ventures to further scale into developing markets in the Asia-Pacific, where it intends to produce more than 6 million tons of disease-free potatoes while eliminating 1.8m tons of CO2 equivalent, which is equal to removing 900,000 cars from the road for one year, from potato farming by 2025.

"We are thrilled to receive ADB Ventures's vote of confidence in our proprietary Microtuber Technology. It gives us renewed momentum to improve the yields of farms and the security of food supplies across Asia and the Pacific," said Keejoon Shin, CEO, EGG.

EGG will also deploy the invested funds to develop similar technologies for other key crops, including sweet potatoes, cassava, onion, and garlic. The company's ultimate ambition is to scale its solution globally and, to this end, it is planning an additional expansion into markets including Europe, Africa, Middle East and Central Asia.