When GrepBeat first covered Plantd in the fall of 2021, the startup was in the prototyping phase, developing hemp-based building materials at a Durham lab and eyeing a 2023 launch.
Fast-forward to today and Plantd has refined its approach, conceptualized a closed ecosystem of carbon-negative panel manufacturing, and raised a $22 million Series B (and, of course, picked up a GrepBeat “Startups to Watch” honor along the way).
For those who may not have kept close tabs on this Oxford-based company over the years, the core proposition is the development and production of carbon-negative building materials to replace traditional options such as wooden oriented strand boards (OSBs).
Rather than cutting down trees to produce wooden panels, Plantd uses perennial grasses that grow tall in a single season, pull carbon from the atmosphere, and ultimately produce building panes that trap that carbon—and are both stronger and more weather-resistant than traditional OSBs.
But that’s only the beginning.
“Where the story is really beginning to evolve is beyond the panel,” said CEO Nathan Silvernail.
Using waste, Plantd “cities,” and versatile production
At the core of Plantd’s ongoing evolution is a commitment to sustainable, low-waste production. In part, this means confronting the fact that crafting carbon-negative building materials produces waste, which needs to be dealt with responsibly.
This need has sparked what Silvernail referred to as a secondary product line whereby Plantd actually creates “various carbon products” from the waste it generates both harvesting raw materials and producing panels.
“That creates a system in which you have a machine that outputs a building material, plus various carbon products that can then go into other materials, either building or agriculture, to help further the sustainability of [those industries doing the building]—and then also provide an interesting path for electrical energy generation,” Silvernail said.
Beyond addressing waste in this manner, Plantd aims to create systems that wrap its various processes together—and even do so on what may eventually become building sites.
“We build the machines specifically to sit at the farms to be [in close proximity] to the raw materials in the first place,” Silvernail said. “And then we automate the entire process.”
With machines sitting at the very farms where Plantd grows its grasses, an entire “closed system” for panel manufacturing can be created. The machines are powered by sunlight and vertical wind turbines and the only “input” required comes down to consumables (which might include release agents, resin, grease, or hardware that helps the machine run).
“But everything else is effectively already there,” Silvernail said. “You’re not tapped into the grid, so you don’t need that infrastructure. You don’t have a building over your head because you don’t need it.
“The machine itself is designed with sustainability and efficiency at the forefront,” he added, “so that there’s not a single [bolt or panel] that’s on there for any other reason than it needs to be.”
Going one step further, another vision is for this system to be built into a “Plantd city” concept. As Silvernail explained, large homebuyers (hypothetical clients) make large investments in land that they may not develop for years. Through agreements with those homebuyers, Plantd can utilize that land for agriculture to grow its materials and produce panels on site.
“That’s kind of how the ‘city’ comes into view in my mind, where you’re actually building housing complexes with the building material manufacturing at its center,” Silvernail said.
On how that process could impact homebuilding in the future, he added, “I cannot think of a better way and a more efficient way to actually bring building materials to the job site.”
Notably, those materials aren’t just panels, either. Silvernail clarified that his machines can produce 1-to-1.5-inch-thick mats of finalized material “which can be cut up however you want,” inviting the potential for various types of construction using Plantd material.
The business proposition
While sustainability is at the core of Plantd’s mission, the startup is clear-eyed about the fact that this alone won’t sway potential clients. For that, Plantd relies instead on two things: an ability to drive its own market, and pure product quality.
Regarding the former, Silvernail noted that traditional supplies such as lumber are subject to volatility, sometimes beyond an individual supplier’s control. As an example, a forest fire can cut into lumber supply, and down the line a homebuilding project can get delayed.
“I come to the table where I make promises around not fluctuating the prices,” Silvernail said to illustrate the contrast. “Everything’s vertically integrated, 99% internally controlled. I can keep my prices steady; I can keep them low. But then at the same time, I develop an architecture that allows me to provide stable volume.”
Silvernail also expressed that the pure quality of the Plantd product is a selling point, even if some might not initially grasp that grass-based material functions as well as it does.
“At the end of the day, you can take my panel and you can take a timber-based panel and put them through the tests and [mine will] kick its ass all day long.”
Acquiring land and fulfilling orders
As for where Plantd stands today within all of these plans, Silvernail indicated that the startup is on the cusp of a ramp-up.
This comes in part through exploring new partnerships, such as one with Ox Engineered Products that Plantd recently posted about on social media (and which will pair Plantd panels with Ox insulating foam). But the primary focus of the ramp-up is on land and raw material.
“In years past, we didn’t have our own fields established…. But fast-forward to today, and we’ve got 350 acres of fields established; they’re bearing fruit, we’re harvesting.”
Accordingly, the company is coming up on its first 100 metric tons of raw material from their own farms right here in North Carolina.
With the $22 million Series B that was closed and announced last fall, Plantd aims to “get to scale,” in part to fill a 10 million-panel order from D.R. Horton (America’s largest home builder). Specifically, this means increasing capacity for raw material growth and processing, as well as finalizing the production process. The latter will entail further implementation of robotics and AI for plant division and planting.
In the meantime, Plantd is focused largely on acquiring land for its near-future production. Silvernail projected that by late 2026 or early 2027 the company would have the ability to output 1,000 acres worth of plants per year—but that that number goes up to 5,000 at some point in 2027. The goal for now, he said, is 10,000 acres.
By the sound of things, though, we might just be hearing about housing developments utilizing Plantd materials sooner than that.
For those interested, Plantd is actively seeking landowners across the Southeast to grow the next generation of carbon-built materials. If you have acreage and want to put it to work, reach out to janel@plantdmaterials.com.
