Kelowna’s INCA Renewable Technologies, a leading manufacturer of natural fiber composites, announced today that the company has secured a $55 million funding commitment as part of a Series B round from a private New York Family Office.
The announcement was made at the international JEC Composites Show Start-up Booster Competition, where INCA was participating.
The funding will enable INCA to commercialize its line of hemp-based, advanced bio-composites for Toyota North America, Winnebago Industries, and Gurit, as well as move forward with construction of its hemp fiber processing facility in Western Canada. Completion of the project will make INCA the first vertically integrated natural fiber composites company in the world.
INCA’s team has deployed their decades of award-winning experience in fiber processing and bio-composites innovation and manufacturing to produce lighter prepregs for the automotive industry, large dimensional panels to replace plywood in RV sidewalls, cores for wind turbine blades and boats, and compounded pellets to replace glass-reinforced plastics.
The product line will be manufactured from hemp which has been legally grown in the Canadian Prairies since 1998, primarily for plant-based protein. INCA will acquire the waste biomass from large growers, refine it into long fiber, short fiber, and hurd and manufacture the full product line.
The New York Family Office CEO said, “As the shift to new lighter, stronger composite materials which reduce carbon footprint is accelerating. Our firm sees the value of this innovative technology, which is not only good business, but on Earth Day, good for the planet.”
“Our ability to transform a low-cost raw material into a set of patented high-value products, will enable our customers to produce lighter, stronger, lower cost and far more environmentally sustainable products. We think it is a winning value proposition,” added INCA’s Chairman and CEO, David Saltman.
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