AppHarvest is the Blazer winner in the Job Creators category for KY Inno's inaugural Fire Awards. To read more about the other Blazer winners, click here.
One company. Three high-tech indoor farms. 700 Kentucky jobs.
AppHarvest (Nasdaq: APPH) has grown tremendously and we’re not just talking about produce.
The Morehead, Kentucky-based agritech company, founded in 2017 and publicly listed in 2021, is operating three controlled environment agriculture (CEA) facilities, designed to grow produce using sunshine, rainwater and up to 90% less water than open-field growing.
While it has three Kentucky farms open in Morehead, Berea and Somerset a fourth is nearly complete in Richmond, Kentucky.
And that means even more good-paying jobs in Appalachia. The company has added about 200 positions in the past year.
AppHarvest is a Certified B Corp, and a certified living wage company, with salaries starting at $28,080. The company offers on-the-job training, productivity bonuses, a health benefits package, a 401K match and company stock. It also has a second-chance employment program, onsite career support contact to help people stay in the workforce and a veterans outreach program.
When asked what (or who) has been critical to the company’s success, founder and CEO Jonathan Webb said: “The work ethic and tenacity of employees in this region and the get-er-done attitude from folks in the region who helped us make this happen during a pandemic.
“I don’t think any other area of the country could have accomplished this.”
Here's more from Webb in a Q&A:
When did you start telling people about the vision for AppHarvest? Were there a lot of doubters? Did you ever think, “Maybe this problem I’m trying to solve is too big?”
I started sounding out the idea in the 2016-17 timeframe. I’d chat with anyone who’d listen about food security as an issue that not enough people were talking about [as] a real threat to the U.S. and about the need for economic development and good jobs in former coal country in Central Appalachia and particularly Eastern Kentucky. Yes, there always are doubters then and now. If you let that deter you, you’d never accomplish anything.
I always felt confident about AppHarvest because the model is based on proven technology that the Netherlands has used for decades to become a top global food exporter from a small geographic area. Plus, the headlines keep proving the need for controlled environment agriculture from extreme weather events such as the 1,200-year megadrought in the Southwest of the U.S., where much of the U.S. production of fruits and vegetables has come from to flooding to wind damage — it’s harder than ever for open-field farmers to predict the growing season they’ll have and to deliver a quality harvest.
Our solution helps to de-risk that and to help with domestic food security. The U.S. is over-reliant on imports with nearly two-thirds of fruits and vegetables being imported and that keeps rising. We need to be able to feed ourselves and we need to have good U.S. jobs making it happen.
How did you know it was time to take the company public? Do you wish you had done it sooner? Later?
Going public was an opportunity not only to diversify our shareholders but to be transparent about our business, which is uncommon with controlled environment agriculture. Going public while still in growth mode making significant investments in Kentucky to get our four-farm network up and running has been something that seems to be a challenge for folks to understand.
We’re working hard now to complete the construction and to optimize production coming out of the farms. We now have commercial shipments going to top national grocery store chains, restaurants and food service outlets from our Morehead farm for tomatoes, our Berea farm for salad greens and our Somerset farm for strawberries and cucumbers.
What’s the biggest challenge AppHarvest is facing moving forward? Biggest opportunity?
The biggest challenge AppHarvest is facing is to turn Central Appalachia into the largest produce-supplying region of the U.S., to shift enough outdoor production to CEA to help ensure domestic food security that’s sustainably grown and to take back fruit and vegetable production from foreign markets to create U.S. jobs. The biggest opportunity is making that happen.
Why Kentucky? What advantages made you build the company here?
In addition to the hardworking employees, the central location puts us within a single day’s drive of about 70% of the U.S. population, plus the climate is temperate with abundant rainfall, which is a big advantage since we turn first to sunshine and rainwater to grow our fruits and vegetables.
Other finalists in the Job Creators category:
RxLightning
(New Albany, Indiana)
RxLightning expects to add up to 175 new jobs over several years in New Albany, Indiana, paying nearly twice the average wage in Floyd County. The health-tech company will invest heavily in software, hardware and more in a three-story historic building at 227 Pearl St. that will serve as its new headquarters.
eBlu Solutions
(Louisville)
eBlu Solutions, which recently moved to 118 E. Main St. to the 15th floor of Waterfront Plaza in Downtown Louisville, plans to add 82 jobs. As of October, the company had 117 employees, the majority of which are in Louisville.
VividCharts
(Lexington, Kentucky)
VividCharts grew its team from just five employees in 2021 to more than 20 in 2022. Last year, the company raised a $2 million seed round, led by Airwing Ventures with participation from Poplar Ventures and Unbridled Ventures.
Sky Systemz
(Lexington, Kentucky)
Sky Systemz, which has scaled to employ more than 60 people in downtown Lexington, expects to add between 70 and 80 employees over the next year. The software-as-a-service company has grown to more than $9 million in annual revenue.
