Cash from big spending billionaires Bill Gates and Andrew Forrest will help fund a West Australian pilot plant to manufacture methane-busting stockfeed additives developed by Rumin8.
Funds from the Forrest family's Harvest Road agribusiness will give the mining and pastoral high flyers an each-way bet in the livestock methane suppression stakes.
Harvest Road was also a foundation investor in the CSIRO-inspired seaweed-based stockfeed business, FutureFeed, which launched two years ago, also backed by GrainCorp, Woolworths and NSW-based agriculture and food technology accelerator fund, SparkLabs Cultiv8.
WA's Rumin8, which is developing a similar product by synthesising plant compounds which can restrict the amount of methane produced in the stomachs of sheep and cattle, has just raised $17.24 million to commercialise trials of its anti-methanogenic ingredients.
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The latest funding will also help scale up replication of the naturally occurring bioactive compounds from its current laboratory output to about 25,000 doses a day.
Livestock trials are already underway in Australia, New Zealand and Brazil, and will be expanded, including into US beef feedlots.
Microsoft co-founder Mr Gates, reputed to be the world's sixth richest person with a fortune worth $155b, is also the founder and chairman of Breakthrough Energy Ventures, which paid for his unspecified funding interest in Rumin8.
Breakthrough Energy Ventures supports cutting edge research and developments in clean energy products and invests in accelerating technologies to build a carbon-free economy and promote affordable and reliable clean energy supplies.
Ruminate offers a low cost, scalable toolbox that already has proven to be effective in reducing emissions
- Carmichael Roberts, Breakthrough Energy Ventures
US-based BEV's unsolicited interest in the Australian climate technology company actually prompted Rumin8 to open the doors to its second round of seed funding after initially raising $7m just six months ago from another US climate impact investor, Prelude Ventures, and Australia's Aware Super Sentient WA Growth Fund.
"The demand for sustainable protein has never been more apparent, which is why BEV is keenly interested in reducing methane emissions from beef and dairy," said BEV investment committee co-leader, Carmichael Roberts.
"Rumin8 offers a low cost, scalable toolbox that already has proven to be effective in reducing emissions."
BEV wanted to support Rumin8 as it worked closely with farmers.
The Gates' climate-focused investment house led the funding round ahead of the Forrests' Harvest Road and additional cash from existing investors, Prelude and Aware Super Sentient.
Big BEV backers
Coincidentally, Andrew and Nicola Forrest's family investment trust, Tattarang, has also previously put money into BEV, alongside other big business names such as e-commerce giant, Jack Ma at Alibaba; Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos; Virgin's Richard Branson, and Bloomberg boss, Michael Bloomberg.
Rumin8 managing director, David Messina, said his company had received "considerable support from climate funds" and, in fact, the second phase seed funding round attracted more money than was sought.
Harvest Road chief executive officer, Paul Slaughter, noted how the company's latest investment complemented its other investments in emerging technologies (including Future Feed) which promised to reduce agriculture's impact on climate change.
"Feed additives are an important pillar in our strategy to reduce our carbon footprint and support our ambition to help solve the global methane emission challenge," he said.
"We believe Rumin8's new technology has broad ranging applications across the livestock sector."
Accelerated output
All going well Rumin8 is set to have its new pilot plant operating about mid year, with Mr Messina confident of being able to scale up further to produce multiple millions of weekly doses of its methane inhibitor.
"The financial modelling we are undertaking is indicating we will be able to supply our products at a commercial price point," he said.
"Our laboratory results continue to yield excellent results and our animal trials are reflecting the lab results."
Rumin8's proposed feed supplement range would be available to stock in feedlot and pasture grazing situations.
The company's technology is applicable to a range of methane reducing compounds found in plants
He said prior to the latest funding round Rumin8 was working on a number of key work streams sequentially, but it now had the resources to run them parallel, which would speed up the commercialisation timeline.
News of BEV's first investment in Australian technology follows Bill Gates' visit to Australia on a climate change-related agenda which included a meeting at Kirribilli House with Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese last weekend.
The federal government has signed up with about 100 other countries pledging to cut methane emissions by 30 per cent in the next eight years.
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Andrew Marshall
Andrew Marshall is the group agribusiness writer for ACM's state agricultural weeklies and websites. He is a former editor at The Land and has worked in various Rural Press group roles in Canberra, North Richmond (NSW) and Toowoomba (Qld).
Andrew Marshall is the group agribusiness writer for ACM's state agricultural weeklies and websites. He is a former editor at The Land and has worked in various Rural Press group roles in Canberra, North Richmond (NSW) and Toowoomba (Qld).
