Victory Hemp Foods
Year founded: 2016
Number of employees: 23
Founder: Chad Rosen, CEO
Amount of capital raised: $7.5 million
Notable investors: Kentucky Governor’s Office of Agriculture Policy; Kentucky Enterprise Fund; Kentucky Rural Innovation Fund; The Sandy River Charitable Foundation, Inc.; Christopher Harding, owner of Louisville City Football Club; Irv Bailey, former managing director of Chrysalis Ventures; and Bruce Linton, founder and former chairman and CEO of Canopy Growth Corporation
Explain what your company does: Victory Hemp Foods is a vertically coordinated business-to-business primary food ingredient processing company on a mission to help realize the potential to commercialize hemp for farmers, brands, and consumers. With protectable plant genetics, an agronomy program to directly support farmer relationships, and novel processing technology, Victory Hemp manufactures superior proteins and oils from the hemp seed that offer brands and product manufacturers compelling taste, nutrition, and performance advantages, especially for plant-based foods.
Victory Hemp’s two groundbreaking ingredients, made from the heart of the hemp seed, are V-70™ Hemp Heart Protein and V-ONE™ Hemp Heart Oil. No longer green and gritty like traditional hemp protein and oil, V-70 and V-ONE are neutral in color and flavor, allowing hemp seed ingredients to be used in a wide range of applications for the first time.
Victory Hemp serves the food and beverage, cosmetic and personal care, nutritional supplement, and animal nutrition markets. All ingredients are Non-GMO Project Verified and Kosher Pareve and are available as USDA Certified Organic.
What are some major milestones in the company’s history?
- Launched Indiegogo campaign, 2016
- Graduated Village Capital Agriculture Accelerator Program, 2017
- Awarded Growth Loan from Access Ventures, 2017
- Kentucky Governor’s Office of Agriculture Policy Loan granted, 2017
- Finished $1.5M seed round of financing, 2018
- Passage of the 2018 Farm Bill makes hemp legal in the United States
- Kentucky Agriculture Development Grant, 2019
- Transitioned from B2C to B2B, 2019
- Contracts with Patagonia Provisions, 2019
- V-70 Hemp Heart Protein and V-ONE Hemp Heart Oil Products Launch, 2020
- Developed strategic partnership with AFS, 2020
- Winner of Hemp Innovation Challenge at World Ag Expo, 2020
- Contracts with Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps, 2020
- Formation of Board of Directors, 2020
- Formation of Hemp States (Victory Hemp’s Genetics Division), 2021
- 3 Process Patents Filed, 2021
- Finished $3.8M Seed Round of Financing, 2021
What is your company working on right now?
We are currently negotiating agreements with some strategic partners and getting through the Due Diligence portion of delivering products that will ultimately lead to long term supply and take-off agreements, as well as direct investments. All this is happening as our R&D department is leading the effort to add more capacity with new equipment that came in at the tail end of 2021.
What’s on the horizon for your company in 2022?
We have big plans for 2022 that include expanding our capacity 4x in our current space while we begin building a new state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in parallel to accommodate our growth. We will be adding new team members to help with this expansion and plan to open a Series B Round that will anchor a capital stack of $30M to fund our growth.
Why grow your company from Kentucky?
The historical success that Kentucky has had developing agricultural speciality and commodity crops including Industrial hemp was the big draw to set up Victory Hemp in Kentucky. With the passage of the 2014 Farm Bill, which was led by our Senate and Congressional representatives in Washington, Kentucky stepped out front in their effort to develop a supply chain for hemp. The tremendous manufacturing workforce located here in Kentucky is supported by farmers–who are blessed with healthy soils and an abundance of water from rainfall–ready to fill fair contracts that support our communities.
