Singapore-based impact investor Silverstrand Capital has invested in a funding round of California-based water technology company Porifera.
The money will be used to accelerate its growth into new sub-sectors within the food & beverage category.
With its membrane processing equipment, Porifera enables beverage and ingredient manufacturers to remove water efficiently and retain all the components of their products to create high-value concentrates with a smaller environmental footprint. Porifera also helps customers efficiently reuse water in their industrial processes.
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Porifera claims it has delivered significant distribution and warehousing savings for top global F&B companies through commercial pilots with reduced environmental impact. Its technologies can potentially reduce over 2 million MT of CO2e in the orange juice segment alone. The technology is also used to concentrate beer, coffee, tea, juice, world-class wine, and many other beverages and ingredients.
“Today, an excessive volume of water is transported thousands of miles away from its source,” said Kelvin Chiu, Founder and Principal of Silverstrand Capital. “Shipping fruits from drought-prone regions to make juice in areas where water is plentiful, for example, is not only ecologically damaging for already stressed water basins – it also results in huge greenhouse gas emissions from transportation and refrigeration. Porifera’s unique technology addresses these issues, and is aligned with our mission to protect nature.”
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“Our customers come in as skeptics and leave as converts after tasting the samples we produce,” said Olgica Bakajin, Porifera’s Founder and CEO. “They are surprised that a beer reconstituted from 6x concentrate, tastes just like the brand we start from, even after being stored for more than 12 months, or when 65 Brix watermelon concentrate looks, smells and tastes like freshly cut watermelon.”
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