Stevie-winner Anuvia Plant Nutrients manufactures high-efficiency, sustainable bio-based fertilizers for the agriculture, turf, and lawncare industries. Located in Winter Garden, Florida, USA, the company developed and uses a unique technology that not only optimizes nutrient availability and efficiency for plants, but also improves soil health, preserves natural resources, and reduces greenhouse gas emissions.
Feeding the World, Starving the Landfill
By harnessing regenerative agriculture, Anuvia Plant Nutrients has developed a high-efficiency, sustainable bio-based fertilizer that not only optimizes nutrient availability and efficiency for 
plants, but also improves soil health, preserves natural resources, and reduces greenhouse gas emissions.
The company’s proprietary technology effectively re-uses organic materials, such as food or livestock waste. Anuvia upcycles this waste into bio-based plant nutrients that work with the ecosystem, not against it, to maximize agriculture production now and for the long term. Its products improve the health of the soil and reduce the environmental impact of fertilization while empowering farmers to implement sustainable practices that benefit the environment.
To add context, up to now, commercial agriculture has relied on synthetic inputs to feed crops, which add no organic material back into the soil. Nature’s natural process to break down plant and animal waste into usable form can take up to two years. Anuvia’s technology achieves this in minutes.
Achievements & Growth
Anuvia negotiated a partnership with one of the world’s largest companies in the agricultural sector, Novozymes, the world leader in biological solutions. The collaboration with Novozymes will bring advanced technology to plant nutrition by marrying Novozymes microbial solutions to Anuvia’s sustainable bio-based products and proprietary delivery system. This technology will further increase yield and ROI at no incremental cost to the grower while reducing nutrient loss and farming’s environmental footprint.
In February 2021, Anuvia announced a $103 million Series C capital raise led by TPG ART and Pontifax Ag. Anuvia used the financing to increase the production capacity of its new, environmentally friendly facility in Plant City, Florida, and expand commercialization to meet growing demand.
The facility now has the capacity to expand to 1.2 million tons, enough to service over 20 million acres of agricultural crops and meet the growing demand for sustainable products. This facility is a one-of-a-kind, state-of-the-art plant. Its manufacturing forms a closed loop in which no waste stream is created—only clean air and finished product. For every ton of organic material used, approximately a ton of fertilizer is produced.
US farmers are responsible for creating the most abundant food supply in the world––a need that will continue to grow as the population climbs to more than 9 billion by 2050. As a result, food production will need to increase from the current 8.4 billion metric tons annually to nearly 13.5 billion metric tons per year (FAO, Building a common vision for sustainable food and agriculture).
At the same time, there is growing demand by consumers and retailers for environmentally sustainable practices and products. To meet these demands, pressure is now on commercial agriculture to not only increase productivity using the same acreage, but to do it more sustainably. Enter Anuvia: by simply swapping traditional synthetic fertilizer for Anuvia’s organic-based nutrients, commercial growers can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 35%. What’s more, Anuvia’s products significantly increase yield while also improving long-term soil health.
According to estimates, for every million acres that uses Anuvia’s unique technology, the reduction of greenhouse gases is equivalent to removing 20,000 to 30,000 cars from the road. If applied to only the US corn crop, which is 90 million acres, this greenhouse gas reduction would conservatively translate to 1.8 million cars removed from our roads in perpetuity.
Since winning their Gold Stevie Award, Anuvia has raised a significant round of new funding from Piva Capital and Riverstone, allowing them to rapidly scale US production of their bio-based fertilizer. This funding is needed to meet the increasing demand for sustainable solutions for commercial agriculture and is a testament to the immediate impact Anuvia is having on farmers and the industry.
Anuvia Plant Nutrients won a Gold Stevie Award for Company of the Year - Food & Beverage - Small at The 2022 American Business Awards.
Interested in entering The 2023 American Business Awards?
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I try not to dwell on the past too much. I think I’m very forward-thinking. I think of the Stevie Awards as a movement, rather than a company or organization. A movement toward wider public recognition of the achievements of people in the workplace, beyond the headline-grabbing billionaires who hoard so much of the news coverage of business. We’ve achieved that to a large extent in some nations and regions, and hardly at all in others. So we still have work to do.
Kelley Higney is the founder and CEO of Bug Bite Thing. Kelley grew up in San Diego, California, and worked with her mother, Ellen McAlister, on the family’s international export and distribution business for 15 years before starting Bug Bite Thing. Kelley and her family relocated to South Florida and were unprepared for how mosquitos would impact their quality of life. The family was suffering from constant mosquito bites, and after many failed attempts using creams and trying home remedies, Kelley discovered a little-known tool that uses suction to help remove insect 
