Money Moves: Baltimore investment updates from Hungry Harvest, T. Rowe Price and Catalent

This week, a Baltimore startup added new investors to a funding round, local institutional firms joined a big raise for a Maryland growth company, and some internal expansion investments for a closely-watched biotech company. Here’s a rundown of the funding news:

Baltimore ugly produce delivery company Hungry Harvest closed its Series A at $13.7 million.

This marks an extension for the round that previously was announced at $7.25 million earlier this year, said CEO Evan Lutz.

The round continues to be led by Paris-based private equity firm Creadev. This extension brings new investors that Lutz said align with the company’s product (food) and mission (ending food waste + hunger). They include Danone Manifesto Ventures, which is the corporate venture arm of Paris-based food and beverage company Danone, Geneva, Switzerland-based impact investor Quadia and Maywic Select Investments, which focuses on fitness, nutrition and well-being.

“Evan and the team are disrupting the status quo in the food supply chain – democratizing fresh, great tasting food
at a price that every family can afford all while reducing our waste footprint. That’s a big idea,” Frederic Mayerson, chairman and managing partner of Maywic Select Investments, said in a statement.

The funding will help the company invest in infrastructure —  the importance of which was highlighted by the overwhelming demand that came in as the pandemic arrived — as well as expansion to new markets.

Lutz said he considers the company fortunate to be seeing an uptick in business during COVID-19, and growth has continued to be above-average since an initial surge in March and April.

“We still have not seen demand quite like this in the six years we’ve been doing business,” Lutz said. “There’s still a ton of people interested in getting groceries delivered at home, and especially from mission-driven companies like ourselves.”

The company, which is based at Port Covington’s City Garage, has also nearly doubled its team this year to 100 people, and continues to hire for roles including project manager and people ops.

Maryland-based investment firms showed up for Gaithersburg-based Xometry’s $75M round.

As our sister site Technical.ly DC reported, downtown-based investment management firm T. Rowe Price Associates led the Series E round for the on-demand manufacturing marketplace along with Durable Capital Partners, the Chevy Chase-based firm founded by former T. Rowe VP and portfolio manager Henry Ellenbogen. Among a group of new and existing investors, the round also included participation from Owings Mills-based VC firm Greenspring Associates.

In a statement, Ellenbogen said Xometry’s “business model enables them to continue to add manufacturing capabilities and expand globally to capture an increasing portion of the $260B global market.”

The company has built up a customer base mixing startups and larger companies, as well as a network of over 5,000 partner manufacturing facilities that help to fulfill hardware and production needs.

Xometry is excited to announce a $75MM round led by @TRowePrice, Durable Capital, and ArrowMark Partners to continue the expansion of our on-demand digital #manufacturing marketplace, providing #supplychain flexibility to companies around the world. https://t.co/QAPy6dyHwA pic.twitter.com/CiOc8WQGJ7

— Xometry (@Xometry) September 9, 2020

Catalent is investing $130M to expand its biotech manufacturing facility near BWI.

Finally, a look at a global company making an investment to expand its local presence.

Catalent, which entered the area by way of last year’s $1.2B acquisition of Baltimore’s Paragon Bioservices, said it will add five new suites to its gene therapy manufacturing operations in Anne Arundel County’s Harmans.

Inside Catalent’s gene therapy suites in Harmans. (Photo by Stephen Babcock)

The facilities are expected to be operational by 2022. The suites will be located in a second building on the campus, which will also have office space and cold storage warehousing. It adds to the initial operation on a campus that opened last year around the time of the exit, which has 10 suites.  In all, the company will have 350K square feet at the site.

This follows the recent announcement of a new agreement between the company and pharma giant AstraZeneca to make drug substance for its COVID-19 vaccine candidate at the site.