Why we invested in Arevo

Based on fundamental research on plant nutrient uptake, Arevo has developed climate smart amino acid fertilizer technologies for faster and better plant establishment.

Arevo’s fertilizers and biostimulants for the forestry industry provide robust plant nutrition while dramatically reducing environmental impact.

A century ago, the two German chemists Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch found a way to artificially convert atmospheric nitrogen to ammonia, effectively enabling the industrialisation of ammonia production. Ammonia in turn became a main ingredient in the production of fertilizers. Some estimate that the Haber-Bosch process, since it’s discovery, has nurtured the equivalent of four billion people’s lives.

As with many innovations of the industrial revolution, the Haber-Bosch process was designed with an industrialization mindset, without much regard to sustainability. Fast forward 100 years, Haber-Bosch accounts for approximately 1% of the global energy consumption and 1,4% of CO2 emissions. Furthermore, studies have shown that ammonia-based fertilizers are a major cause of eutrophication.

With the aim to gain an understanding of what plants need to grow, Prof. Torgny Näsholm at Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences has dedicated his career to studying plant nutrition. His studies point towards the nutritional inefficiencies of ammonia-based fertilizers and lay out evidence for the superiority of amino acid-based fertilizers. Based on his research, the sustainable fertilizer firm Arevo was founded. Through years of collaborative projects with the forest industry, Arevo has proven that their fertilizers are better at stimulating plant growth compared to conventional solutions. Furthermore, their products significantly reduce leakage of fertilizer into the soil, and thus mitigate the risk of eutrophication. And, through synthetic biology, the amino acid-based fertilizer is produced in a fully sustainable manner.

It turns out, the answer to sustainable fertilizers wasn’t in chemical process innovation. Rather, it was in biology. At Navigare Ventures, we’re convinced that solutions inspired by nature will be key to solving some of our largest industrial and environmental challenges. Arevo is proof of that, and why we are excited to partner with them.

Investment date

December 2017