Just, a US-based vegan food producer backed by food conglomerate Uni-President Enterprises Corporation, is looking to raise approximately $200m in funding, Bloomberg has reported.
The company is primarily seeking China-based investors and has hired CLSA, the overseas arm of Chinese investment bank Citic Securities, to oversee the fundraising process.
Founded in 2011 as Hampton Creek, Just markets a range of plant-based food products including egg scramble, mayonnaise, cookie dough, salad dressing and oatmeal. It is also working on a plant-based meat alternative.
The funding is expected to help Just move past several years of controversies, beginning with a Bloomberg report in 2016 that stated it had been purchasing its own products from supermarkets to boost sales in the run up to a funding round.
The company was investigated by the US Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission, but maintained the purchases were purely for quality control and in March 2017 was cleared of any wrongdoing.
Three months later, four out of five board members resigned, leaving behind co-founder and CEO Joshua Tetrick. The resignations were due to a failure to generate sufficient revenue, missed product deadlines and allegations of food safety issues that had led retailer Target to pull the company’s products from its shelves.
An investigation by news publication AlterNet in September 2017 revealed the food safety concerns to have been a “malicious hoax” but Target nevertheless refused to restock any items.
Just appears to have raised at least $220m to date. Tetrick revealed a $100m series D round in 2016 during a speech to employees, but further details have not emerged.
In the same speech, Tetrick claimed an unnamed German media company, existing investors in Asia, large UK funds and a high-net-worth US individual were about to invest in the company, but no further news about the round materialised.
Just’s most recently confirmed round came in 2014 when it raised $90m in a series C round co-led by Horizons Ventures and Khosla Ventures that included Uni-President, Far East Organization, WP Global, Collaborative Fund, Founders Fund and assorted private investors.
The company’s shareholders also include AME Cloud Ventures and Eagle Cliff Partners and angel investor Vinod Khosla.
Ali Partovi, who contributed to the series C round and subsequently became a senior executive with Just, resigned from that position within nine days, claiming Tetrick was misleading investors over sales projections. He sold his shares to Marc Benioff, founder of enterprise software producer Salesforce, in 2015.
– Image courtesy of Just.
