Keeping things fresh in the food supply chain
• AgroFresh aims to prevent food loss and conserve the planet’s precious resources
Private equity is ideally suited to companies looking for more than just capital, but partners who can help the founders to elevate their business, establish succession planning or develop the scaffold to scale internationally.
Tessara is one of those – an exceptional business solution backed by valuable intellectual property, with strong cash generation and even hard currency earnings diversification. It’s why RMB Ventures acquired an interest more than 10 years ago, and why Carlyle saw value when RMB decided to exit.
AgroFresh has been a pioneer in post-harvest technology for more than 20 years, and got its start with the commercialisation of the SmartFresh ™ Quality System — the industry’s leading postharvest solution to maintain produce freshness and quality. It is now used in more than 50 countries and across multiple crops, including apples, pears, plums, kiwis, mangos, broccoli and avocados.
AgroFresh is a global AgTech innovator with a mission to prevent food loss/waste and conserve the planet’s resources by providing a range of sciencebased solutions, data-driven digital technologies and hightouch customer services. AgroFresh supports growers, packers and retailers with solutions across the food supply chain to enhance the quality and extend the shelf life of fresh produce.
AgroFresh’s comprehensive portfolio has expanded to include plant-based coatings, antimicrobial solutions, equipment and digital platforms that help improve quality and reduce waste across the supply chain, from harvest to home.
Founded in 1985, Tessara is a well-established business with a strong brand and a growing global market position in sulfur dioxide (SO2)-based sheets for use in the preservation of fresh produce. Its flagship product is Uvasys, an SO2-based sheet primarily used to protect table grapes against Botrytis infection, which is responsible for almost 50% of all post-harvest agricultural loss. Uvasys also enhances transportation, export and storage of grapes.
Tessara has rapidly grown its business, both in SA and internationally, with exports now representing more than 65% of annual sales.
Essentially, Uvasys is a preservation technology that releases a gas over the fruit and stops a fungus forming in the fruit for two-and-half months. The key intellectual property was developed at Stellenbosch University during the 1990s. The founders purchased the technology and commercialised it.