BERKELEY, Calif., (BUSINESS WIRE)—June 5, 2012—The Roda Group, the largest investor in the renewable oils company Solazyme (NASDAQ:SZYM) and a venture capital group focusing on large-scale and lucrative business opportunities that address the issues of climate change, increasing demand for low carbon energy, and stress on the Earth’s natural resources, announced that it has invested in two new companies in the cleantech space.
mOasis has created a soil amendment product that increases crop yields while simultaneously reducing the need for fertilizer, water and water-related energy use. The product is a new type of hydrogel, a polymer known for its ability to absorb massive quantities of water. The mOasis product is able to enhance the amount of moisture and nutrients available to a plant’s root zone and significantly reduce water stress between rain or irrigation cycles. The company is led by Susanna Kass, CEO and Dr. Nai Hong Li, Co-Founder and CTO. mOasis is currently conducting field trials, managed by prominent agriculture scientists, that have already produced promising results.
Svante Inc. (Formerly Inventys Thermal Technologies) has developed an energy and capital-efficient technology for capturing carbon dioxide from industrial sources. The company’s proprietary process is less than one-third the cost of existing industrial CO2 capture technologies and will enable the widespread adoption of carbon capture and sequestration. The company is led by CEO Andre Boulet and fellow co-founders Brett Henkel, Soheil Khiavi and Darryl Wolanski. Inventys is building an in-house pilot unit capable of capturing multiple tons of CO2 per day from a natural gas power generator by late 2012 and will be deploying field units with major industry partners in 2013.
Roger Strauch, Chairman of The Roda Group, said, “As was the case with Solazyme, The Roda Group is enthusiastic and proud to invest in talented and passionate people who look forward to developing and selling products that address enormous market opportunities while helping the world build a more sustainable and healthy environment and food supply. We believe that mOasis and Inventys will fundamentally advance the way we grow food and produce energy, respectively.”
