AppHarvest Kicks Off 2023 With New Management, Farm Transition
January 4, 2023 
Photo: AppHarvest
AppHarvest, Inc. has finalized the sale-leaseback of its Berea, KY, indoor leafy greens farm for just over $127 million and has opened a new 60-acre high-tech indoor farm in Richmond, KY.
AppHarvest formed an agreement with Mastronardi Berea LLC, a joint venture between Mastronardi Produce and COFRA Holding, for the sale-leaseback of its Berea high-tech indoor farm for leafy greens for approximately $127 million with an initial lease rate of 7.5% over 10 years, with four renewal terms of five years each. Mastronardi Produce, AppHarvest’s exclusive marketing and distribution partner, has sold AppHarvest’s produce including tomatoes, leafy greens, and strawberries into some of the top national grocery store chains, restaurants, and foodservice outlets.
Some of the proceeds of the sale-leaseback will be used to repay the previously announced $30 million bridge loan from Mastronardi Produce to AppHarvest and the first two years of prepaid rent at the Berea facility.
“The AppHarvest team has worked relentlessly this year to get the four-farm network operational, and those efforts have paid off with the quadrupling of farms in our network and diversifying our crop set,” says AppHarvest Founder & CEO Jonathan Webb. “The team is now focused on operations to ramp up production and revenue from the four high-tech farms.”
AppHarvest also announced that its Richmond, KY, farm is officially open and has begun growing Campari brand tomatoes. The first harvest at Richmond is anticipated in early January, which will mean that for the first time AppHarvest is expected to have commercial shipments coming from each facility in its four-farm network. Half of the Richmond farm currently is planted, and the other half is expected to be planted in 2023.
Earlier in 2022, the company opened two other high-tech indoor farms — a 30-acre farm in Somerset, KY, for strawberries and cucumbers, and a 15-acre farm in Berea, KY, for leafy greens.
New Chief Operating Officer
AppHarvest also recently named AppHarvest board member Tony Martin as Chief Operating Officer. Martin will retain his board seat, and as COO he will lead efforts to optimize production and revenue across the AppHarvest network.
“I expect Tony’s extensive background in controlled environment agriculture (CEA) and his track record for optimizing the efficiency of core operations and consistently achieving revenue growth will help us accelerate our path to profitability,” Webb says.
“AppHarvest is at an exciting inflection point transitioning from a construction and development mode to an organization focused on core operational excellence,” Martin says. “I believe AppHarvest has a tremendous opportunity to leverage its world-class CEA network at a time when both changing climate and major grocery retailers are demanding it. We’re working to ramp up production and revenue by ensuring efficient, cost-effective delivery of high-quality produce to major grocers and restaurants.”
Martin joined AppHarvest following a nearly 12-year career with Windset Farms, one of the largest CEA producers and marketers of indoor-grown crops in North America with more than 250 acres in the U.S. and Canada. At Windset, he supported both significant infrastructure and revenue growth. Martin has served as a consultant in the CEA sector and is a board member of the Fruit & Vegetable Dispute Resolution Corporation, a non-profit that sets standards for the trade of fresh fruits and vegetables in Canada.
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