The Healthy Grain: Opportunity to invest and drive the awareness of BARLEYMAX®
Opportunity for
- We are seeking long-term investors with a focus on agriculture, whole foods, and health products to support BARLEYMAX®'s expansion into new markets. Ideal partners will have experience or investments in sustainable agriculture and gut health, recognizing the value creation potential of BARLEYMAX®. BARLEYMAX® is the next globally relevant super food. Similar to quinoa, we are still relatively nascent in the early days.
^This opportunity is only for professional and sophisticated investors.
Opportunity description
Industry challenge
Poor gut health is increasingly being shown to have flow on impacts for overall health and wellness. Most populations in developed and developing economies do not eat enough dietary fibre, which is a key cause of poor gut health. BARLEYMAX® being a superior and nutrient dense wholefood can play a key part in solving this, by providing more dietary fibre and 4 prebiotics essential to improving gut health as an easy to use, versatile ingredient and also as a standalone product that can be potentially accessible to millions of people. The implications of poor gut health are an untold cost in the tens or hundreds of billions in health care costs associated with obesity, diabetes and heart disease.
Globally the prebiotic functional food market is estimated to have a market size of USD7billion, and growing at an 8% CAGR to 2030.
Current opportunity
Opportunity to invest in and grow the awareness of BARLEYMAX®, the most complete wholefood prebiotic in market, and to ride the next wave of growth for prebiotics and gut health. BARLEYMAX® is a patented non-GMO strain of super barley developed by the CSIRO (Patent Number 2009200577). Its unique combination of 4 prebiotics, high dietary fibre (32%), high protein (16%) and low GI (33) mean it is the perfect superfood and has the potential for preventative health outcomes at a global scale.
THG is seeking funding to support the next stage of growth of the business and to put BARLEYMAX® into more products in market, so more consumers can access the gut health benefits. We have a proven sales track record in Australia in addition to an exciting pipeline of new potential customers. We also have ongoing consistent sales to Japan and Taiwan, and promising developments in Europe, PRC and other Asian markets. There is an opportunity for investors and collaborators to fund this growth as well as bring more connections to the table which can be in the form of domestic industry connections or export market resources. The funding will go towards rebuilding our B2B sales function, and strengthening our marketing capabilities.
From 2005 to 2015, developed economy demand for quinoa grew >1,600% and has grown at a sustained CAGR of 15%. BARLEYMAX® being nutritionally superior has the potential to track this growth if not potentially exceed it.
Opportunity background
BARLEYMAX® was developed by CSIRO through traditional cropping methods over close to a decade. Teijin Limited (a Japanese R&D powerhouse) invested into THG in 2016 and have completed a significant amount of inhouse R&D and external clinical trials proving the efficacy of BARLEYMAX®. As a result of the research conducted by CSIRO, Teijin and other institutions, there are more than 12 clinical trials supporting the health benefits of BARLEYMAX®.
The supply side of BARLEYMAX® has been derisked, with significant yield improvements on the grower side and our supply chain and production partners thoroughly tested. BARLEYMAX® is unique and is one of the most performative all round superfoods available on market for improving gut health and is the most versatile and adaptable of foods with prebiotics. It can be used in many product formats standalone, and also as a minimally processed ingredient in bakery, flatbreads, ready to eat meals, pasta and noodles, cereals, healthy snacks, rice additive and potentially also in drinks.
Potential other applications
As part of our growth plans, we will be building our marketing and distribution capabilities into core parts of the health and wellness market (both on a B2B and consumer product front). We can see potential future opportunities for other high value agricultural products to benefit from our network and marketing playbook as well as potential synergies and scale benefits from their incorporation under our consumer brand umbrella. We appreciate that other agri-food startups in the future will encounter similar problems that we have already navigated and will further navigate as we grow. Once we have scale we would look to help with the platform we have built.
^Professional and sophisticated investors as defined in the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth). The content of this opportunity is intended for use by persons having professional experience in matters relating to investments and must not be acted or relied upon by any other person including, without limitation, retail clients.