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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Red Sea Farms

Red Sea Farms Raises an Additional $6M to Grow Crops With Saltwater

Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Farms has raised an additional $6 million in pre-Series A funding, bringing the total round to $16 million (h/t Wamda). Those leading the round include Aramco’s venture arm Wa’ed, the Saudi government-owned Future Investment Initiative (FII) Institute, KAUST, Global Ventures, AppHarvest, and Bonaventure. The $6 million announced over the weekend follows an initial $10 million investment the company unveiled in June of this year.

Red Sea Farms, which is based out of King Abdullah University for Science & Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia, is developing a grow system for crops that relies primarily on saltwater as the primary irrigation input. As company cofounder and CSO Prof. Mark Tester told The Spoon recently, the system works on both crops grown traditionally via land and those grown indoors using hydroponics. The idea is to provide more resource options for farmers in parts of the world where freshwater is less abundant. The company’s technology can use saltwater for evaporative cooling in greenhouses, which could potentially cut a facility’s carbon footprint.

Red Sea Farms currently has three grow sites, all in Saudi Arabia. The pre-Series A round of funding will help the company expand its operations in Saudi Arabia and other parts of the Middle East, as well as explore opportunities in the U.S. “where growing conditions are harsh.”

A number of companies have announced crop innovations for the Middle East region this year, including iFarm’s partnership with Sadarah Partners in Qatar and AeroFarms’ developing a R&D hub in the UAE. Also in 2021, Estonian automated gardening company Natufia announced its relocation to Saudi Arabia. Most of these developments are in response to a rising urgency around global food security coupled with a need to reduce the planet’s over-reliance on traditional agriculture resources (e.g., freshwater, land).

Red Sea Farms says it can cut freshwater consumption of farming operations by by 85 to 90 percent through its grow system.

Red Sea Farms Raises $10M to Grow Crops in Saltwater

Red Sea Farms, a Saudi Arabia-based startup developing technology to grow crops in saltwater, announced today that it has raised $10 million in funding. According to a press announcement, the round was led by a group of Saudi and UAE investors including the Aramco entrepreneurship arm Wa’ed, the non-profit foundation Future Investment Initiative Institute, KAUST and Global Ventures, a UAE venture capital group.

Red Sea Farms is based out of King Abdullah University for Science & Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia. We just covered Red Sea Farms a couple weeks back, writing:

In a nutshell, Red Sea Farms is able to either irrigate land crops with saltwater or grow crops hydroponically using a mixture of 90 percent saltwater and 10 percent fresh water. Right now the company is growing tomatoes through a combination of plant selection, breeding and grafting (but not genetically modifying) in such a way that developed root stocks that can grow in saltwater.

Red Sea Farms is currently applying its technology to both indoor and outdoor trials in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and sells its own brand of tomatoes in markets in Saudi Arabia.

The work Red Sea Farms is doing could create entirely new agricultural possibilities around the world. Countries with abundant coastline and not as much fresh water could become more food independent.

In addition to growing crops in seawater, Red Sea Farms has also developed technology that uses seawater instead of freshwater in evaporative cooling systems to maintain proper temperatures inside greenhouses.

Red Sea Farms said it will use its new funding to build and retrofit more than six hectares of commercial farming in Central and Western Saudi Arabia.

Red Sea Farms is Growing Crops in Saltwater

Earth’s oceans are good for a lot of things. They generate more than half of the oxygen we need to breathe, regulate our climates and provide us with a bounty of fish for sustenance. One thing the ocean’s salty water is not so good at? Watering crops. At least it wasn’t. Startup Red Sea Farms is developing a new technology that uses saltwater to not only irrigate crops, but also help cool growing facilities in an energy efficient manner.

Based in Saudi Arabia, Red Sea Farms is affiliated with King Abdullah University of Science & Technology (KAUST). I spoke with Prof. Mark Tester, Co-Founder and CSO of Red Sea Farms, by video chat this week, and while he was pretty tight lipped about exactly how his company’s technology works, he did share the basic ideas.

In a nutshell, Red Sea Farms is able to either irrigate land crops with saltwater or grow crops hydroponically using a mixture of 90 percent saltwater and 10 percent fresh water. Right now the company is growing tomatoes through a combination of plant selection, breeding and grafting (but not genetically modifying) in such a way that developed root stocks that can grow in saltwater.

The obvious importance of this technology is that areas of the world that are now inhospitable to agriculture because of fresh water access, arable land and temperature could someday produce their own crops with the abundant (and free) sea water.

To be clear, Red Sea Farms isn’t growing tomatoes in the sea. Rather, it is bringing in sea water to either irrigate fields or into a greenhouse facility it has set up in Saudi Arabia. But that saltwater isn’t just growing the tomato plants. Red Sea Farms has also developed a way to use saltwater in its evaporative cooling system. This, plus the use of transparent solar panels at its greenhouses could be used by other growing facilities to reduce their carbon and freshwater footprints when producing food.

Red Sea Farms is already selling tomatoes and cherry tomatoes at markets in Saudi Arabia. As Tester explained, tomatoes grown in saltwater are actually sweeter than normal tomatoes because the plants produce extra sugar to overcome the salt. Additionally, the tomatoes have a slightly thicker skin, which gives them a little extra crunch and extends their shelf life.

While Red Sea Farms currently makes food, it’s an agritech company with a longer term goal to fully develop and productize its technology for licensing out to third parties.