London-based Treefera, a supply chain resiliency startup founded by former execs at UiPath and JPMorgan, has raised a $30m Series B led by Notion Capital.
From Covid-19 to Donald Trump’s recent round of tariffs on trading partners, businesses are increasingly preoccupied with the risks inherent to managing global supply chains. The global supply chain management industry is expected to be worth close to $80bn globally by 2033.
Treefera, which was founded in 2022, analyses satellite images to provide companies with data on the crops that form the stages of their supply chains. The round comes just over a year after Treefera secured its $12m Series A. AlbionVC, Triple Point, Twin Path Ventures and Endeit Capital joined Notion in the new round.
Caroline Grey, cofounder of Treefera and previously chief customer officer at UiPath, says the startup has benefited from companies needing to make quick decisions about where they source goods from in the wake of Trump’s tariffs.
“We have seen tailwinds from tariffs,” she says: “I don’t hang my business on it, but there are tailwinds from businesses wanting to make informed decisions about the cost impact if they use ingredients from a certain country.”
Before the tariffs, geopolitical events like Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine had already sent shockwaves through supply chains, leading to an uptick in tech solutions focused on giving companies oversight into them.
Traders and insurance companies
Treefera’s tech aims to help companies growing or buying commodities to assess the risk of things like wildfires and drought could have on their crops. It also allows them to model the cost of transporting the crops from different geographies, both financially and in terms of carbon emissions.
As well as commodity producers and buyers, Treefera provides data to insurance companies and trading houses, allowing them to price climate risk into their decisions. The company is focused on expanding its reach in financial services: Grey’s cofounder, Jonathan Horn, is a former JPMorgan managing director.
“It’s been very hard to find data on nature-based assets, which make up 51% of the world’s trade,” says Grey.
Treefera will use its new funding to expand across North America, Europe and Asia, with a particular focus on Singapore. A significant amount of commodity crops flow through the country, which is also home to a large number of commodity trading houses too.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/treefera-supply-chain-tech-30m/
