Greensoil, an investment firm from Canada will fund Israeli agritech companies with a reported $12 million.
Cash from Canada will be funding clean technology companies in Israel. A new Canadian fund called Greensoil looks to build Israeli agritech companies with the launch of a $12 million CAN fund. Greensoil investors say they will invest in Israeli companies whose technology innovations help the world feed its population with less water and less arable land. It will uniquely focus on food and agricultural innovation from Israel. The company will invest in agro and food technologies with existing or near-term revenues and plans for international expansion. There are no specific announcements on who the fund will be investing in, but a PR rep told me announcements will come soon.
The focus will be Israeli clean tech, innovation that can help feed our growing world of 7 billion. A focus on Israel is not unusual and it has an enormous clean tech cluster in agritech companies, companies that can save water, enhance output, and use less pesticides or no pesticides during crop cultivation.
Greensoil says it will focus on companies whose technology can help produce unique foodstuffs, additives, seeds, irrigation and agricultural management systems. Investing in new crops, methods and better yields will lower the inputs required for food production, such as reducing fertilizer and water use, they hope.
Investments by the fund will be in early growth stage, Israel-based, companies with revenues or close to first revenues. The fund is organized as a pledge fund, consisting of a number of partnerships, each investing in a limited number of companies.
Greensoil’s co-founders are Alan Greenberg, the fund’s chairman, a successful and well respected Toronto-based real estate developer and managing partner Gideon Soesman, formerly a senior executive at Royal Philips Electronics and a seasoned investor at Philips Corporate Venturing and Philips M&A.
More crop per drop
Asked why Greensoil has chosen to establish its fund, Greenberg said “We are focused on an area where the global problems are pressing – less arable land per capita, less water, more mouths to feed – and where the need for disruptive innovation is great.”
Why Israel? “Israel is unique as a hotbed of food and agro innovation –drip irrigation and many hardy plant varieties were developed here – and these let us grow more food on less land with less water.”
The fund’s investors are made up primarily of Canadian individuals that see the potential of Israeli food and agro innovation. GreenSoil has completed its first closing and expects the final closing of the first partnership of the fund within 6 months.
Author: Karin Kloosterman
Karin Kloosterman is an award-winning journalist and publisher that founded Green Prophet to unite a prosperous Middle East. She shows through her work that positive, inspiring dialogue creates action that impacts people, business and planet. She has published in thought-leading newspapers and magazines globally, owns an IoT tech chip patent, and is part of teams that build world-changing products to make agriculture and our planet more sustainable. Reach out directly to [email protected]
Two nice Provinces of Canada are under a decade long attack for production of so called dirty oil. The whole land in Southern Alberta and Saskatchewan now is under attack for extracting of oil from soil! With a sophisticated dangerous polluting process and this is in the same area that a tiny beetle called pine beetle is destroying many million hectares of pine trees. Why a wealthy nation like Canada is doing this now, they were supposed to be guardian of peace, human right and environment that it seems they lost the whole bargain for now. There are so many toxic components in crude oil and they are most toxic to aquatic system and now with those big oil disasters what will happen to our aquatic life that is shared between all nations, we in developing countries and in particular in oil producing countries of the Middle East have to take lesson and be very careful for the situation.
Two nice Provinces of Canada are under a decade long attack for production of so called dirty oil. The whole land in Southern Alberta and Saskatchewan now is under attack for extracting of oil from soil! With a sophisticated dangerous polluting process and this is in the same area that a tiny beetle called pine beetle is destroying many million hectares of pine trees. Why a wealthy nation like Canada is doing
this now, they were supposed to be guardian of peace, human right and environment that
it seems they lost the whole bargain for now. There are so many toxic components in crude
oil and they are most toxic to aquatic system and now with those big oil disasters what will
happen to our aquatic life that is shared between all nations, we in developing countries
and in particular in oil producing countries of the Middle East have to take lesson and be
very careful for the situation.