Nitricity, a California-based startup producing organic nitrogen fertilizer from air, water, renewable energy, and upcycled almond shells, has raised a $50 million Series B round co-led by World Fund and Khosla Ventures as it prepares to open a new plant in Delhi, California.
The round was supported by Chipotle’s Cultivate Next venture fund, Change Forces, Susquehanna Sustainable Investments, Energy Impact Partners, and Fine Structure Ventures.
Set to become operational in Q1, 2026, the Delhi plant should be at full capacity (8,500-tons) three to four months later, with its output already sold out through 2028 under binding offtake agreements with local organic growers of specialty crops.
The liquid “Ash Tea” fertilizer—which is designed for application through irrigation lines—is approved for use in organic farming and registered with OMRI (the Organic Materials Review Institute) and OIM, the California Department of Food & Agriculture’s Organic Input Material program.
Higher yields, no animal products
Founded in 2018 by Nicolas Pinkowski, Joshua McEnaney, and Jay Schwalbe, Nitricity had previously explored technologies such as cold plasma that mimic the way lightning fixes nitrogen in the atmosphere.
However, the economics ultimately didn’t add up, said the firm, which subsequently developed a different process to create an organic fertilizer that can replace products such as chicken manure, soy hydrolysates, fish emulsions, and slaughterhouse waste, chief commercial officer Jayesh Goyal told AgFunderNews.
“That’s one of the reasons farmers really like our product, because there’s no animal products involved, no risk of contamination. Fish emulsions also smell to high heaven and chicken manure is hard to spread. Our product is a little more expensive than chicken manure and less expensive than fish emulsions and soy hydrolysates and it won’t clog up emitters [on irrigation systems].
“But the main reason people love our product is because they are seeing increased yields. In the field trials we’ve done so far, we have seen 15-30% increases in yield compared to other organic fertilizers.
“They also like the fact that we can adjust the acidity of our product and provide the fertilizer at the right pH. We have two versions. The neutralized version has organic limestone mixed in and has more calcium as a result. The acidic version (no limestone) eliminates the need for sulfur burners [which farmers often have to use if irrigation water has a lot of bicarbonates in it]. Both products have the same percentage by weight of nitrogen.”
He added: “We’re just getting flooded with [inquiries from] customers wanting this. The demand is just really amazing.”
The production process
Nitricity’s process relies on the combustion of organic almond shells and a combination of air, water and renewable energy, said Goyal. “We’re basically heating up the almond shells and brewing a kind of tea. We then filter out the ash at the end and get a clear looking liquid that’s reddish orange in color that farmers can use like liquid fertilizer, except it doesn’t have any suspended solids, so it doesn’t clog up their irrigation systems.”
He added: “There is combustion involved, so a fair amount of energy is involved, but the costs of that will vary depending on where the sites are located.
“In California, you pay a fairly high cost for electricity, but we’ve chosen to start here because many of our initial customers are here. Once you go to other states such as Washington State or Arizona or Nevada, electricity prices are much lower, which makes a material difference in our cost of production.”
He added: “The original idea [at Nitricity] was that they would build small, modular units that farmers could install on their farm, use solar energy and be able to produce fertilizer on site. While that is still a long-term aspiration, we found out that to have small units at each farm becomes a maintenance nightmare.
“But we also didn’t want to go to the other extreme and build a giant factory in one central place in the US. So the sweet spot we’ve landed at is that you should build these ideally with a capacity somewhere between 10,000 and 100,000 tons per year of liquid fertilizer. And for that, the capex involved at the lower end would be around $12 million and at the higher end about $60 million.
“That’s also easier to finance, but the more important point is that it keeps the facilities close to where the farmers are. We don’t want to be shipping product all across the country.”
While it makes sense to use upcycled almond, walnut or pistachio shells as the source material in California, Nitricity has also tested its process on other materials from olive waste to grapes, although it would have to add a drying step, he explained.
Next steps
Right now, Nitricity is focusing on organic farmers of specialty crops such as berries, spinach, arugula, and parsley, but as production costs come down, he said, “and they’re coming down quite rapidly, we expect to also be able to address conventional farmers and go after row crops such as wheat, corn, and soy.”
As to the locations of future plants, he said, “If you are close to a rail spur, then even distances of even 1,000 miles are not too daunting. If you are not using rail, I would say the sweet spot is probably within a 150-mile radius [of the end customer], which is what we’ve targeted with our first facility.”
Looking ahead, he added, “We have a lot of demand within California, but we’re also starting to get demand from Oregon, Washington State, and Arizona, so we’ll probably be looking at those markets [for the next production facilities]. And then Colorado being another interesting state. In parallel, we have started the process for registering our product in Europe.”
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