Growing up in the Hunter Valley, a region of Australia renowned for its fine wine production, Mitchel Fowler never realized he might one day come up with an idea that may revolutionize the wine industry. But after a long career in finance, he’s returned to that heritage to launch a platform that could solve the procurement cycle and inventory management problems that have debilitated the wine and drinks industry for decades.
Ferovinum is both a SaaS platform and a lending platform for wine producers. Their problem is that conventional B2B lending or banking products debilitate the growth of the drinks industry, as the inventory can’t be easily lent against.
Instead, Ferovinum turns the wine and spirits produced into a ‘just in time asset’ so that drinks producers can focus their equity capital on growth (rather than tying it up on stock), and scale up funding for their production in a way that would be much more risky if conducted through more conventional financial products.
Users of Ferovinum place their inventories on the platform during production and distribution periods, and then sell them off the platform to resellers, who may also be on it.
As Fowler told TechCrunch over a call: “As the platform carries the stock for the clients end-to-end — throughout the entire value chain — this also allows the client’s supply chain to benefit from our supply chain technology, automation, and market access for import and export flows, and thus getting closer to, for instance, exports to the US.”
He says the platform “is a new way for businesses in the drinks sector to unlock growth versus the traditional path of raising equity to fund growth, where you hope to get acquired by a large corporate along the way.”
Fowler says the platform can thus “democratize” financing for wind production even for smaller producers.
It’s now raised a $23.2 million (£17.5m) for global expansion and already claims to have provided £114 million in working capital for the UK wine and spirits industry as a result of customers using its platform.
Ferovinum is also tackling a market where there is little competition in terms of direct competitors. Most of the time wine and drinks producers are cobbling together various software to run their businesses, and the financing aspect remains separate.
Fowler told TechCrunch: “There are SaaS tools, like Unleashed, for example, which is wine inventory management software. But the beauty of what we’re building is it’s end to end, and it’s sector-specific, so from managing it in the warehouse all the way to delivering and fulfilling to those retailers.”
That’s what attracted Notion Capital, a European SaaS and Cloud investment firm, whose General Partner Jos White will now join the Ferovinum board. The round also had participation from Shapers VC, Semapa Next, and Ferovinum’s existing shareholder group.
White said in a statement: “Ferovinum’s platform leverages technology to give small and mid-sized players in the drinks industry access to funding, and an integrated set of supply chain services. In this way they enable their customers to compete more effectively with the large corporates and, ultimately, to unlock growth. We couldn’t be more excited to invest in this industry disruptor.”
Customers now include two of Edinburgh’s independent distilleries; Holyrood Distillery & Port of Leith Distillery; English sparkling wine producers Ridgeview Wine Estate and Hundred Hills Winery.