AppHarvest
AppHarvest, an ag-tech company operating one of the world’s largest controlled environment agriculture facilities in Morehead, Kentucky, with additional facilities planned in the state, has become a publicly traded company. AppHarvest recently completed a business combination with Novus Capital Corp., which focuses on specialized acquisitions.
The transaction provides AppHarvest with more than $435 million of unrestricted cash, which will primarily be used to fund operations, including building additional high-tech controlled environment indoor farms, to support growth and for other general corporate purposes. AppHarvest is now one of about 50 publicly traded companies with headquarters in Kentucky.
Jonathan Webb
“It's a great opportunity but one that comes with great responsibility. We're now a fiduciary of public stakeholder dollars,” said AppHarvest founder and CEO Jonathan Webb. “With cash in the bank, we have a plan in front of us, and now it's down to executing and trying to speed up all those timelines.”
In addition to building new growing facilities and getting its crops in major grocers across the country, AppHarvest is also working with schools, universities, government and private businesses to build an infrastructure for increased ag-tech research and development in Kentucky, and to educate students about opportunities in the industry.
During a tour of the Morehead facility, which primarily grows beefsteak tomatoes, in February, Gov. Andy Beshear compared the potential regional impact of AppHarvest to that of Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky when it located to the state in the mid ’80s.
Webb “is providing the vision and the know-how that’s redefining how we feed a growing world, but I think he’s also creating what will be the anchor for so much economic development, for so many jobs of the future, right here and right now,” Beshear said.