RED Horticulture closed a €17 million Series A funding round to drive its growth and invest in the development of its high-performance lighting strategies. The round was led by European Circular Bioeconomy Fund (ECBF), Demeter IM and Unigrains. Part of the financing comes from a banking pool (BPI, BNP Paribas, CIC, Crédit Agricole, Société Générale) and support programs from BPI.
The capital raised will be used to develop the high-performance lighting strategies together with customers and innovation partners, as well as to support internal research at the PARC, Photobiology & Agronomic Research Centre, RED’s agronomy center in Nantes, France. Additionally, the capital will be used to increase the acceptance of the RED solution in all growing market segments.
Based in the Netherlands and France, the company has developed the world’s most advanced dynamic lighting solution for high-tech greenhouse operations. Founded in 2018 by two engineers, Yassine El Qomri and Louis Golaz, RED’s turnkey solution consists of top-of-the-line dynamic luminaires controlled by RED’s AI-powered proprietary platform MyRED. RED Horticulture’s mission is to change the industry by working on the 3 pillars of plant cultivation: yield, quality & energy consumption. Alongside it’s scalable hardware solution, RED supports growers, breeders and researchers with unique photobiology knowledge to secure more profitability in their operations.
Louis Golaz, CEO of RED Horticulture, said: “Since its establishment, RED Horticulture has experienced impressive growth in an intensely competitive market. We have consistently believed in the unique advantages of our dynamic lighting solution, characterized by its user-friendliness, unparalleled flexibility, and unmatched scalability. This has continuously set us apart in the industry. Our latest funding round with ECBF, Demeter and Unigrains testifies to the continuing success of our hard work and unshakeable faith in our product. Made up of top-level investors, this transaction firmly solidifies RED Horticulture’s position as the frontrunner in the field of dynamic horticultural lighting.”
RED Horticulture contributes to more sustainable agriculture through new lighting technologies. Applicable to many high-tech greenhouse operations, RED Horticulture’s solution is based on dynamic spectrum LED lights that precisely activate the photoreceptors of plants in greenhouses and are controlled via the AI-powered proprietary platform MyRED. Whether the goal is to reduce energy consumption, increase yields, shorten crop development times or achieve outstanding product quality: By providing the right light at the right time, growers using RED Horticulture’s lighting strategy achieve higher yields and better crop quality while saving energy resources.
Stéphane Roussel, Partner at ECBF, commented: “Controlled environment agriculture (which includes greenhouses), is poised to grow fast because of the many advantages it offers: producing healthy and nutritious crops close to where they are consumed, while using less soil and water, and with reduced usage of chemicals. We were impressed by the boldness and vision of RED’s founding team to offer a solution that optimizes light as any other input in the greenhouse. Leveraging its strong agronomic expertise, RED offers the possibility to growers to both automate their operations further and optimize for what matters to them (be it yield, energy, product quality).”
In case studies, strawberry growers have increased yields by 35 percent and reduced the time from sowing to harvesting their crop by 20 percent. At the same time, young plant breeders have reduced energy consumption by up to 60 percent and achieved better crop morphology using RED Horticulture’s lighting strategy.
