CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Chromatin, Inc., an agriculture technology company, today announced the first closing of its Series E financing round, expected to total $36 million. Wood Creek Capital Management, an investment manager focused on investing in real assets and intellectual property, including agricultural resources, led the round. Other participants included GE Capital, Equity, as well as funds that had participated in earlier rounds of financing: BP Alternative Energy, IllinoisVentures, the State of Wisconsin Investment Board, and Adventures IV, LLC. With its Series E round, Chromatin has successfully raised over $70 million of equity in aggregate.
Chromatin is bringing a range of innovations to sorghum — a high-yielding, nutrient-efficient, and drought tolerant crop that can meet the growing global demand for sustainable food, feed and biomass production. Significant market demand for Chromatin’s proprietary sorghum products is driving the company’s rapid growth.
“Chromatin will use the capital it has raised to support additional expansion and to accelerate product development and differentiation for sales in both the U.S. and international markets,” said Daphne Preuss, Chromatin’s CEO. “Wood Creek’s comprehensive understanding of global water and land resource limitations makes the firm an ideal fit as an investment partner for our company.”
Bob Saul, a Managing Director at Wood Creek, has joined Chromatin’s Board of Directors. “Wood Creek’s analytical team, led by Nick Schupbach, identified sorghum as a high value investment opportunity supported by strong macroeconomic drivers,” said Saul. “As we explored opportunities to invest in the crop, we saw in Chromatin an opportunity to deploy our capital to return predictable and significant growth. We are impressed by the company’s trajectory, by its growing portfolio of high value intellectual property, and by its leadership team.”
“Bob has an outstanding track record of investing in agricultural resources. He and his colleagues bring important investment and market expertise to our board,” said Preuss. “We look forward to drawing on their insights as we grow the company.”
Macquarie Capital served as exclusive financial advisor and placement agent for Chromatin in the financing transaction.
About Chromatin:
Chromatin, Inc. develops sorghum for both traditional agriculture markets and for uses in new applications. It provides high quality sorghum seeds to growers and producers who are attracted to the crop’s rapid maturation, tolerance to heat, cold and drought and high yields. Chromatin has optimized its product portfolio to create sorghum feedstocks that serve as ideal renewable resources for emerging bio-based industries such as liquid transportation fuels, chemicals, materials and biopower. Today, Chromatin’s products are sold in the U.S. and in more than 20 countries, where its sorghum seed is planted on over 4 million acres. For additional information, please visit www.chromatininc.com.
About Wood Creek:
Headquartered in New Haven, CT, Wood Creek is an SEC registered investment advisor founded in 2005 and is an affiliate of the MassMutual Life Insurance Company and its asset management subsidiary Babson Capital Management, LLC. The firm invests in mobile telecom infrastructure, transportation assets, aviation industry assets, farmland and agricultural infrastructure, water, and mining capital assets. In intangible assets, Wood Creek is a first mover as an institutional investor and has established or helped to build a number of new investment platforms in music copyrights, film and television content, specialty branded and generic pharmaceuticals, pharmaceutical royalties, and technology patents.
