697: A SPAC Puts Leafy Greens on the Menu | Guy Blanchard, CFO, AeroFarms
Back in 2014—when Guy Blanchard first entered the CFO office at AeroFarms—the indoor vertical farming company had roughly 20 employees and a commercial farm prototype under construction.
Seven years and four rounds of private funding later, AeroFarms has recently broken ground on its third commercial farm in Danville, Virginia, and a research farm in Abu Dhabi.
Meanwhile, this past March, Aerofarms demonstrated that its appetite for innovation extends beyond farming techniques when it announced a merger with Spring Valley Acquisition Corp., a SPAC that the company now expects to use as a vehicle to go public.
“Spring Valley prefers growth-stage companies that don’t have any technology risk and can just focus on the execution part of the equation,” says Blanchard, when asked how the talks with Spring Valley had first gained traction.
"They were a great match for us, and this allowed us to narrow the timeline and announce the merger in an accelerated way," explains Blanchard, who notes that the merger, once closed, will provide $357 million in gross proceeds and empower AeroFarms to execute a business plan that involves the opening of vertical farms across the country. –Jack Sweeney
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