Original Story Published by: Taga Kene-Okafor, www.techcrunch.com
Photo Source: Releaf
(Above) Zanzibari door with semi-circular lintel.
Releaf, a Nigerian agritech startup that supplies ingredients (starting with the oil palm) to consumer goods manufacturers and their food factories, has received $3.3 million in an oversubscribed pre-Series A round.
The Jack Ma Foundation-backed startup, which announced a $4.2 million (including a $1.5 million grant) seed raise in September 2021, said the funding will support the launch of two new technologies: Kraken II and SITE.
Releaf focuses on value chains where smaller factories are set up near smallholder farmers, allowing them to get better processing yields and less expensive logistics costs. The oil palm is the first, and for now, the only crop Releaf works on; the oil palm market is a $3 billion market that consists of more than 4 million smallholder farmers. These farmers drive about 80% of the crop’s production using rocks or inefficient hardware, responsible for producing low-quality vegetable oil. That’s why the agritech launched Kraken, its static palm nut de-sheller machine built to process this crop and efficiently extract “high-quality” vegetable oil for farmers.
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