AppHarvest has invested in a 2.76million-square-foot greenhouse in Morehead (Ky.) to help meet this goal. We were just talking earlier and you mentioned how you're in the DC area, it was fortunate that we had Steve Case, the founder of AOL, and he fundraised the rest. Webb: You said you didn't want to talk the rest of the day about ESG, right? But I wanted to ask you before we do, the Root AI acquisition. Jonathan Webb: AppHarvest, we're based here in Central Appalachia and we're building some of the world's largest controlled environment agricultural facilities. Jonathan Webb is the Founder and CEO of AppHarvest, a company that combines conventional agricultural techniques with cutting-edge technology to address key issues including improving access for all to nutritious food, farming more sustainably, building a homegrown foods supply, and more. If you look at the largest grocers in the U.S., we're selling to Kroger, Walmart, Publix, and we're selling to Wendy's. Webb left for college, eventually pursuing a career in renewables at the DOE, a space where he felt he could be part of the solution. But the economic devastation in his home state still bothered him. Prior to founding AppHarvest, Jonathan supported the Executive Director of the Army Office of Energy Initiatives to help meet the White House goal of supplying 20% of the Department of Defenses electricity usage from renewable All rights reserved. The regulators are pushing that direction. "Tech for good the consumer wants it. Moser: That's exciting. You are speaking our language here at The Fool. Webb: The industry is at an inflection point. By the end of next year, well quadruple that. A former England international, he reached the World Cup Final in 1991 and was a two-time grand slam champion in the Five Nations. Jonathan Webb, CEO, AppHarvest: AgTech Farming for Our His extensive experience and knowledge in the field have led to his reputation as a leading knee surgeon in the UK. Is there a benefit? He actively engages with his followers through his various social media accounts, including Instagram and Twitter. On this week's episode of Industry Focus: Wildcard, host Jason Moser chats with AppHarvest (APPH) founder and CEO Jonathan Webb about the growing opportunity in the agtech space, what makes AppHarvest unique, his vision of the future of farming, and much more. Thats why AI scares people, we know tech can be used just as coldly as anything else. He often sleeps in an RV outside the construction site of its second facility. Other AppHarvest investors include TV cook Martha Stewart, VC veteran Peter Thiel, ValueAct Capitals Spring Fund, Revolutions Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, Equilibrium Capital, and Narya the new VC firm co-founded by JD Vance, author of best-selling Appalachian memoir Hillbilly Elegy. You can also compare Dr. Webb with other orthopedic surgeons in Eau Claire to find the one that best suits your needs. Investors look at that, Peter Halt, AppHarvests newly appointed chief financial officer, told, Step aside, alt-protein: Bioplastics are the real agrifoodtech opportunity, The rise of the reused machines: Germanys E-Farm raises $5.3m Series A. 95% of a fruit and vegetable is water. WebInside is a tightly controlled environment that uses 90% less water than open-field agriculture and only rainwater to produce crop yields up to 30 times that of traditional Because it is cutting-edge technology. What's that Harvest's secret sauce? AppHarvest Went From Seed to $1 Billion in Just 3 Years Webb: We could not be more excited. Were building robotics and software that will ultimately be able to service the entire global agriculture industry. could be sentient says Microsofts chatbot feels like watching the Shark Tank investor Kevin OLeary says a new generation of employee has never worked in an officeand its totally I cant afford to sell because I dont want to lose that rate: 3% mortgage rates will loom large over the U.S. CA Notice at Collection and Privacy Notice, Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information. We've had record amounts of rainfall. "We have the capital we need and we're focused on building and operating, and just head down on execution," Webb said. AppHarvest AppHarvest (APPH) CEO Jonathan Webb said the company has its eyes on the long term as it looks to "institutionalize" controlled environment agriculture (CEA). WebJonathan Mark Webb net worth is $800,000 Jonathan Mark Webb Wiki: Salary, Married, Wedding, Spouse, Family Jonathan Webb is an actor, known for Graffiti Bridge (1990), In It doesn't need to be one or the other, it needs to be both, and we're happy to be a bit of a public benefit corporation and B Corp certified. We love DC, but we don't want to just be selling to the high-end restaurants in DC. Offers may be subject to change without notice. If you want to know how wealthy he is, read on! Is there any one thing or is it a collection of many things? He has many impressive accomplishments. Dr. Webb graduated at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine. Part of it is that building big stuff fast in the US is very hard. Visualize our facility in Murray, Kentucky, it's 2.8 million square feet, nearly 50 football fields under-glass. The system it uses reportedly reduces water usage by 90% compared to traditional open-field agriculture, while also eliminating runoff. We've been able, very fortunate, a very talented team, MIT team out of Boston that has a proven track record and great products that we've integrated them fully into the AppHarvest team. Founder of AppHarvest, Inc., AppHarvest Morehead Farm LLC and AppHarvest Operations, Inc., Jonathan Webb is an entrepreneur who is Chairman & Chief Executive Officer of AppHarvest, Inc. and Chairman & Chief Executive Officer of AppHarvest Operations, Inc. (a subsidiary of AppHarvest, Inc.). We want to be at Kroger. Like every Kentuckian, Jonathan grew up knowing of the devastating job losses in the region. The business combination values AppHarvest at a $1.0 billion pro forma equity value, at the $10.00 per share PIPE price and assuming minimal redemptions by Novus Capital shareholders. We just have to keep our head down and execute and do our job every day here at AppHarvest. What's your competitive advantages or something you feel differentiates you from your competition? But to our investors the question and I got this on the roadshow, I'm in this to make money, great. ESG should be at the core of profitability and it should be at the core of building a resilient company. One of AppHarvest's mobile units ready to fight the food fight, outside of AppHarvest's offices in [+] Lexington, Kentucky, If we cant treat people with dignity and respect who put food on our table, where do we think humanity is going to end up? AppHarvest By us running on completely recycled rainwater, we have no water cost. AppHarvest For example, we use integrated pest management, good pest to kill bad pest. You have to get permitting, communities [buy-in], state and federal support, infrastructure, inspections. WebJonathan Webb - Founder & CEO @ AppHarvest - Crunchbase Person Profile Person Jonathan Webb Overview Number of Founded Organizations 1 CB Rank (Person) 4,704 Yahoo Finance's Julie Hyman at the 2022 SXSW Conference, 3 big things in investing you might have missed this week, UPDATE 1-North Korea says US causing international arms control collapse, EU releases funds, prepares aid flight for eastern Congo, Rheinmetall in talks on building tank factory in Ukraine - report, Ukraine Latest: Metsola Urges More Sanctions Pressure on Russia. Thank you for accessing our content on the Topio Networks Market Intelligence Center. You start to do the math, and realize you might need two planet earths to have enough land and water to grow that food.. In light of the challenges AppHarvest has faced in its early stages, Webb expressed hope that younger generations like Gen Z and millennials would continue to innovate and "fight through" any obstacles in their way. Just wondering if you could share some of the highlights, some of the things you're proud of in regard to this earnings release, and your excitement here for the year to come. Webb: To put this in perspective, this was our first facility under operations, our flagship facility. Why? San Francisco Bay Area, Silicon Valley), Total number of current Jobs the person has, CB Rank (Hub): Algorithmic rank assigned to the top 100,000 most active Hubs, Number of news articles that reference the Person, How AppHarvest Is Investing in the First Generation of High-Tech Farmers, AppHarvest May Not Be a Tasty Investment Yet, Agtech company AppHarvest debuts produce in select grocery stores, AppHarvest hires Impossible Foods David Lee as president, AppHarvest hires chief communications officer, Watch NASAs James Webb Space Telescope do high-tech origami, Varsity Spirits Webb on Bolstering the Middle Class, Jimmy Webb, Purveyor of Punk Fashion, Is Dead at 62, James Webb Space Telescope Successfully Deploys Its Mirror for the First Time. To learn more about AppHarvest, you can visit appharvest.com. We always talk about investing for the future because that's really what investing is all about. Then I got to mention the area we're in, Eastern Kentucky has been known for coal mining for decades, it was known as the whole country, so to speak, and empowering the U.S. through the industrial revolution with low-cost coal. I did want to know here because I saw this in the earnings release and I just thought it was one of those quotes that stood out to me from Mastronardi, your distributor. The actor regularly posts photos and videos of himself, as well as engaging with his fans. That lowers transportation costs by 75%, allowing AppHarvest's fresher produce to better compete against low-cost foreign imports. We can better understand what product we are going to have available? This year alone, more than 50 SPACs have been formed in the US, collectively raising. Get 5 free searches. I love your long-term focus. I don't want to keep you all day, but before we wrap it up, I did want to talk to you a little bit about ESG, environmental sustainability governance issues. Webb supported a large-scale solar project in Virginia while he was employed by the U.S. Department of Defense. Jonathan Webb is the largest individual Appharvest shareholder, owning 20.54M shares representing 19.04% of the company. Executive Vice President and Head of Enterprise Development, Support Activities for Agriculture and Forestry, Contract Support (U.S. Army Office of Energy Initiatives), Intelligent Assistance and Bots Ecosystem. If people remember that ice storm back in February, our facility operated, ramping up into full capacity with no issues in the middle of a global pandemic and the middle of an ice storm. Webb, a Kentucky native and University of Kentucky graduate, says he remains committed to his goal of employing large numbers of people at high-tech farms around the eastern half of the state. Appharvest Stock Ownership The world's food and agriculture problems are not going to be solved overnight. One, our geographic location. We're ramping up and scaling quickly. Webb made a second appearance for England, and reached the final. Now, we want to turn this region into an area of the country that's known for sustainable food production, but beyond just loving the place, I'm from Kentucky, beyond just loving this area, we can get to three quarters of the U.S. on a day drive. And because of the work they are doing, those companies will be able to hire the brightest people, despite resignation trends. "For us, being transparent with not only the consumer, but having that transparency of a public company as we build a large global food company, we think the long-term benefits are great.". Jonathan Webb was born on 24 August 1963, in London, England. David and Tom just revealed what they believe are theten best stocks for investors to buy right now and Walmart wasn't one of them! When youre building tech for techs sake, you start to question what youre doing. Copyright 2023 Surperformance. Below, we look at some of his most popular tweets. But if you look at all the problems in the agriculture system, this industry really solves most of those problems. 10 stocks we like better thanWalmartWhen investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have an investing tip, it can pay to listen. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Tesla. We have to figure out how to grow a lot more food with a lot less resources and we can use that by utilizing technology and infrastructure to grow fruit and vegetables with 90% less water and get about 30 times yield per acre. They ask themselves, Did we help five people today? Webb founded it in 2017 in his native Kentucky; it became a certified B Corp two years later. Sustainable investor Equilibrium We have a phenomenal team of sustainability experts. Talk a little bit about what ESG means to you and some of the things that you've done, because corporately you set your business up to be able to account for some of that transparency and whatnot. This article will briefly review the most important information. But I dont think thats adding value to the company, or looking out for our shareholders, he said. We're building infrastructure in an area of the country where we're having record amounts of rainfall, and if you look at the climate maps, we continue to get wetter. "The public market needs to have a robust category of companies that are building stuff that matters," he stressed. Going down, scanning the plant, pest, is there a disease, brightness? With that difficult work that in mind, Webb has designed his company to grow as much produce as possible as sustainably as possible. His vision of the future of farming and much, much more. With a 19% stake, CEO Jonathan Webb is the largest shareholder. Moser: I guess you're saying, and a lot of us would agree, you can't have your cake and eat it too. We're ramping up this first facility in the middle of a global pandemic, we had an ice storm. A specialist in knee surgery, Webb has performed countless surgeries in elite rugby union teams. We're going to be headquartered in Central Appalachia, execution at scale here in the U.S. but this is a global problem that we've gotten phone calls from around the world about how and when we can take our solution and go elsewhere. Jonathan Webb - Biography - MarketScreener.com It is a non-profit organization that provides education and social services to low-income residents living in low-income apartments. The nonprofit organization he founded is still in operation today, and he continues to serve as Board Chair. Theyre looking for purpose in their life; theyre looking for companies like us.. To me, at least, it feels like we are at the [] of a disruptive phase here, and a lot of that is thanks to technology. How excited are you to bring that Root AI company in their leadership into your family? It's a nice evolution in the investing world that we care more and more about it. There won't be one automotive company transporting the world. The Art of Self Meditation: What Are the Benefits? You can also follow him on Instagram. Its first crop will be non-GMO tomatoes, which will be provided to a number of US grocers. Webb is from Kentucky, where 16% of residents are below the poverty line, and when the coal jobs dried up, nothing came in to replace them. A universal harvester robot at AppHarvest's Morehead, Kentucky greenhouse, AppHarvests crops are monitored for quality control 24/7 and harvested robotically, a labor-saving advancement that lets the staff treat farming almost like a manufacturing process. In 1985, he joined Bristol Rugby and won the John Player Cup. Again, the private markets get a very bad rap socially. Webb was also the first LPGA player to win $1 million in a single season, finishing first on the year-end money list. For the fourth quarter Jonathan Webb's Appharvest shares are currently valued at $20.96M. Almost every company in the coal industry has gone bankrupt over the last 10 years. We've been very fortunate and humbled that the Root AI team is fully a part of the AppHarvest team building robotics that's operating on AI, collecting data. But being true to our ESG values, we think it is a competitive advantage and going to make us more competitive in the years to come. He acknowledges that scaling up so quickly in the middle of a pandemic is, almost unheard of in the current world. I'm looking forward to being able to find more and more of these AppHarvest products in our grocery stores as we move forward. AppHarvest raised $500 million on its balance sheet this year, went public on the Nasdaq, hired 400 people to work in its first facility, and brought its first product, beefsteak tomatoes, to grocery stores including Kroger, Walmart, and Publix. Public asset : 44,698,475 USD. Follow her on Twitter at @BrookeDiPalma or email her at bdipalma@yahoofinance.com. I'm one of those people growing up I went to public schools here in Kentucky. Jonathan Webb grew up in Kentucky and has been committed to developing Clearly, the younger generation is coming up, sustainability matters, better food matters. Eventually, he found the right problem to solve. Yes, we're using nature for what it's good. WebJonathan Webb, CEO, AppHarvest: AgTech Farming for Our Planets Future. ET More on the future of agriculture and vertical farming innovator We dont see it as losing money for losing moneys sake; developing that tech is investing in our future.. Making the world smarter, happier, and richer. Age : 37. I write about the future of food, business, and culture. We've moved most of our fruit and vegetable production down to Mexico and we're importing and shipping in 2,000 miles. Were investing heavily in our future, so were spending heavily today, he said. You look at California and the Southwest of the U.S., drying up, drought-stricken, flagged by wildfires. Tomatoes will be the first fruit rolling out of AppHarvest's soon-to-launch facility in Morehead, Kentucky. I want to know what the problems are from them, not just our executive team. Project Access, Inc. was founded by Mr. Webb in 1999. We're farmers, we are growing fruits and vegetables, and we're utilizing sunlight, we're utilizing rainwater. Project Access offers ESL/ESL classes, after school programs, and computer literacy. Visualize this, down the rows of our facility, we have a robust that's going to take thousands of photos of a tomato plant. People, planet, wonderful, but I'm trying to make money. Similarly, she owns yachts and private planes and serves on the board of the Women Golf Club Foundation. Were building important stuff with long-standing value, so the Great Resignation has actually helped us acquire talent.. He studied history and economics at the University of Cape Town, and obtained a Bachelor of Laws and post-graduate diploma in maritime law from the University of Natal. My answer to that is always; sustainability is profitability. We can also do it by returning investors to our shareholders. Although his net worth is impressive, its important that you remember that he doesnt have to act alone to be wealthy. Those are always famous last words as we move into some disruptive phase. But the futuristic pieces, we've combined a technology team with a great plant science group. When people and robots work together, its actually more productive than robots alone or people alone. On a traditional farm, there are a seemingly infinite number of tasks to do at any given moment, so adding some computers to make it more efficient doesnt mean that human farmers will be anywhere near obsolete any time soon. Earlier this year we did get listed on the Nasdaq. He is also becoming more involved with green shipping and is a council member of the London Shipping Law Centre. For us, this year, it's less about the dollars and more about hitting our targets and we were able to hit our Q1 guidance and ramp up our facility to, later on, this year by Q4, we'll be at full capacity in Q3 and Q4, selling tomatoes out of this facility in more Kentucky. Required fields are marked *. To catch full episodes of all The Motley Fool's free podcasts, check out our podcast center. They're not going to be solved in a month or a year or a quarter and we just want to build an organization that's going to be able to go toe-to-toe with the larger incumbents out there, and the best way to do that is to have that rigor of being a publicly traded company. That's our headquarters. AppHarvest Founder & CEO on company's public debut via SPAC AppHarvest But really its water and food first. WebJonathan Webb, AppHarvest Inc: Profile and Biography - Bloomberg Markets Live Now Bloomberg TV+ Leaders with Lacqua:Mark Read WPP CEO Bloomberg Radio Meet the Jeff Ubben on investing in AppHarvest - CNBC Despite IPOs last year having the worst returns in a decade, Webb said he believed 2021 was an important time for the company to go public and stood by the decision to take the company's mission "directly to the Street" and to receive the "rigor of Wall Street early," which he claimed will only make the company "stronger in the long run.". We could've raised capital privately on the balance sheet and kept building. Jonathan Webb, Founder & CEO, AppHarvest I made the point at one point in regard to AppHarvest. The applied technology company is developing and operating some of the worlds largest high-tech indoor farms. We're in that classic scenario of demand exceeding supply. That might sound straight from science fiction, but AppHarvests CTO Josh Lessing, who designed many of these universal harvesting systems says we only think that because farming has been so slow to innovate. We want to make sure you get the most out of our platform. Its service leadership; our team does not work for me, I work for our team., To that effect, hes imparted a lesson to each of his team members: Every day, help five people. 2023 Fortune Media IP Limited. FORTUNE is a trademark of Fortune Media IP Limited, registered in the U.S. and other countries. How do they plan on achieving that goal? We've had 8,000 people apply to work at the company and we've hired 500 people in the middle of a global pandemic. A SPAC is formed with the sole purpose of raising capital through an IPO in order to acquire an existing privately-held company and take it public. Webb founded AppHarvest in 2017, and the company was certified as a B Corp two years later. Jonathan Webb - Founder & CEO @ AppHarvest Webb: Well, we built the company from day one. I'm Jason Moser, thanks for listening, and we'll see you next week. Again, tomatoes are our first crop, but by next year, strawberries and leafy greens. Many of our early investors have been very helpful with the company, and we knew that we are not just building one facility, we're building an organization that's going to go toe-to-toe with agriculture and food, globally. It made good logistical sense since Kentucky is within a days drive of 70% of the United States, plus there was an untapped labor force there ready and waiting to be hired. His military experience allows him to leverage private capital for his projects. Good CEOs do both., Given the rapidly worsening climate outlook, all founders should focus on building a business that will be more powerful in 30 years than it will in 30 days, he said.
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