Dusseldorf Albana Rama became the founder of the company more by chance. After nine years in the financial sector, she had slipped into a crisis of meaning. An adventure trip to the Brazilian rainforest should take her “out of her comfort zone”, as she says, and give her fresh ideas
But there she got to know a world that changed her life. She lived with the farmers for three weeks and helped harvest the acai berries, which are an important livelihood in the Para region. “I understood there that the rainforest was being cut down because that was the only way people could survive financially,” Rama reported in an interview with the Handelsblatt.
Back in her native Switzerland, the 38-year-old quit her job and founded The Rainforest Company (TRC). Their goal: to contribute to the protection of the rainforest and its inhabitants through fair trade. She wanted to help “give the local people a financial basis that also enables them to protect their land,” she says.
The core of their business is the acai berry, which is considered a superfood in Europe because of its high content of nutrients and vitamins. In the Brazilian rainforest, it is a raw material that can be wildly harvested in large quantities. “This is the most important raw material for the farmers,” explains Rama. “It was very well suited to founding a business model on it.”
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She imports the berries directly from the farmers and pays them a price that is 30 percent above the average market price. As a result, farmers can not only protect the trees, but have already planted more than 2.5 million new trees. So far, she has processed the berries into 25 different products, which are sold in over 12,000 shops, including retailers such as Rewe and Edeka.
Influencer Pamela Reif helps with marketing
The entrepreneur owes her rapid success not least to her collaboration with fitness influencer Pamela Reif, who helped develop the first products and acts as a brand ambassador. In this way, TRC already achieved sales of 20 million euros last year with snacks, bowls and purees made from the acai berry.
After six years of development work, the start-up is now on the verge of a breakthrough. In its first major financing round, Rama was able to collect more than 36 million euros in capital. The founder has thus closed one of the largest financing rounds in 2022 in the foodtech sector in Germany and the largest for a foodtech company led by a woman in Europe.
The fruit is considered a superfood in Europe.
(Photo: AP)
The funding was led by CVC Capital founder Steve Koltes’ UK family office Kaltroco and included other sponsors including Corecam Capital, Futury Capital and Green Generation Fund. TRC is valued at around 100 million euros. “We are proud to support The Rainforest Company in the next step of the growth phase,” explains Cornou Rykaart from Kaltroco.
What is particularly important for entrepreneur Rama: Even after the financing round, she still holds the majority in the company with 52 percent. “I always delayed funding until I was sure that I still had the majority,” she says. That was already the case when the investor Katjes Greenfood gave her start-up capital in 2018.
“In my view, the real value lies in building a company, not in raising money,” she emphasizes. “It wasn’t about enriching myself financially, I would have earned better in the financial industry.”
ETH Zurich examines the climate impact of the start-up
It is very important to the entrepreneur not only to support the farmers in Brazil, but also to scientifically determine and document the climate impact of her company. To do this, she works with Thomas Crowther, Professor of the Ecology of Global Ecosystems at ETH Zurich. She has the climate footprint of her company checked by the organization Eaternity.
“Our employees are on site several times a year, and I also travel to the rainforest at least once a year,” says the entrepreneur. “We are externally certified, which is then checked on site.” The company had its entire CO2 emissions checked, from production to delivery to the customer, every packaging, every transport.
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For the past year, Rama has had confirmation that her company is actually carbon negative. Since TRC began sourcing acai from the Para region of Brazil, deforestation there has decreased by 40 percent, research by Crowther and Eaternity showed. Millions of trees could be preserved in this way.
At the same time, the company uses the collaboration with ETH Zurich to research new products. They are working together on a fertilizer made from mushrooms and on innovative foods that are enriched with iron.
Acai products are sold in 3000 airport shops worldwide
This approach was one of the reasons why the Kaltroco family office got involved with TRC. They invested in the start-up “because we believe in entrepreneurial success with the ‘innovation through science’ approach,” explains investor Rykaart.
With the fresh capital, TRC, which has so far mainly sold its products in German-speaking countries, wants to expand internationally and further expand the product range. Last year, Rama was able to win Dufry AG as a sales partner, which operates around 3,000 shops at airports worldwide.
What the founder is particularly proud of: “We have been profitable since 2018, and it will remain so.” This also has to do with the fact that she had to do without any external financing for the first two years. “When I founded the company in 2016, a food start-up with products from the rainforest was not yet an option for investors, it was totally unsexy at the time,” she recalls.
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Her starting capital was her own savings. “If you start a business with your own money, you’ve learned not to waste money,” she says.
She doesn’t think it’s a bad thing at all that the expansion capital for founders is no longer given out as lightly as in previous years. “I’m glad,” she says, “that market conditions have changed in such a way that building a profitable company is more of a focus again.”
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