With the 2020 harvest season behind us, ProducePay announced its year-end financing totals, including $60 million in financing to produce farmers in Mexico, who grew over $750 million worth of fresh produce exported to the United States.
ProducePay, an eLab alumni (Class of 2015), is an alternative financing, data and marketplace company serving the $300 billion fresh produce market. Helping farmers in the U.S. and countries across Latin America grow over $2.5 billion of produce, the fintech company is on pace for 99 percent year-over-year revenue growth in 2020.
Mexico is the top produce trading partner with the United States. Over half of all imported produce comes from Mexico, and that number continues to grow—imported Mexican produce has doubled as a percentage of U.S. consumption over the last 10 years. About $14 billion in fresh fruits and vegetables imported from Mexico annually, which amounts to 25 percent of total U.S. produce consumption.
Since 2014, ProducePay has raised $250 million in funding—$205 million of which was obtained from CoVenture and TCM Capital in 2020 alone—to help produce growers navigate the opaque produce market by providing access to three tools growers have traditionally lacked—financing, pricing data and a network of trusted buyers and suppliers.
Farmers of perishable goods, such as fruits and vegetables, have historically lost out on growth opportunities, because banks are unwilling to assign any collateral value to their produce. That’s where ProdcuePay steps in—the startup eased liquidity crunches at multiple points in the harvest cycle in 2020 by financing over $2.5 billion of produce (up 100 percent from 2019).
“Living and working on my family’s farm in northwestern Mexico, I experienced firsthand the rigidity of the harvest cycle and the liquidity problems that come with it,” said Pablo Borquez Schwarzbeck, founder and CEO of ProducePay. “Now, we’re proud to have helped ease those cash flow problems for so many produce growers in Mexico and Latin America.”
Read the original story in The Produce News.