A Massachusetts-based lettuce company is undergoing a major expansion and establishing new facilities to reach farther down the east coast.
Little Leaf Farms, which opened its first Devens greenhouse in 2015, will seed the first crop of lettuce in its brand-new McAdoo, Pennsylvania greenhouse next week and also has facilities planned in North Carolina.
“We’ve had great success in our core New England Market and we’re now transferring to the greater northeast and Mid-Atlantic,” said CEO Paul Sellew. “People have validated what we’re providing based on our sales growth so we raised this capital to take what we developed here in Massachusetts to take it to other parts of the eastern seaboard.”
The company raised $300 million in capital through the Rise Funds, an investment fund founded by TPG, U2 guitarist Bono and Canadian businessman Jeff Skoll, as well as Bank of America.
The funding will be used for the new greenhouses as well as enhancements at the company’s three Devens greenhouses. The Pennsylvania farm will increase the company’s retail presence by 50%, with products available in more than 3,500 grocery stores.
Little Leaf Farms is the country’s largest lettuce supplier that uses controlled environment agriculture, or CEA, an agricultural technique that uses indoor environments rather than outdoor fields to ensure the perfect growing conditions for crops. The company uses a hydroponic setup in a peat moss-based substrate, Sellew said, and represents 42% of the CEA lettuce produced in the United States.
“If you look in just the leafy greens space right now, the vast majority, over 97%, are grown in outdoor fields in California and Arizona depending on the time of year,” he said. “The only way you can do this in Massachusetts, because of our four seasons, you need to control the environment, and that’s what we do. We use a greenhouse platform to do that and we therefore can create every day as the perfect environment for our lettuce plants to grow.”
Little Leaf Farms' greenhouse in McAdoo, Penn. (PRNewsfoto/Little Leaf Farms)Little Leaf Farms
In addition to growing greens without pesticides, herbicides and fungicides, the CEA process allows Little Leaf Farms to grow more sustainably, using 90% less water than conventional methods, natural sunlight, captured rainwater and solar panels.
In addition, by growing locally instead of in warmer areas of the country, Sellew said they can eliminate carbon emissions from transporting lettuce on trucks all the way to New England and deliver their product within 24 hours of harvesting.
“People might not realize, but 90% of the food we eat in Massachusetts and New England is grown outside the region,” Sellew said. “We’re a big believer in locally-grown and making our communities more resilient, which is really important, especially on the heels of the pandemic.”
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June 30, 2022 at 09:21PM
https://www.masslive.com/business/2022/06/devens-based-lettuce-supplier-little-leaf-farms-to-expand-with-new-facilities-in-pennsylvania-north-carolina.html
Devens-based lettuce supplier Little Leaf Farms to expand with new facilities in Pennsylvania, North Carolina - MassLive.com
https://news.google.com/search?q=little&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
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