Growcentia opens new Loveland headquarters

LOVELAND — Growcentia Inc., an agricultural biotechnology company, Friday celebrated the grand opening of its new corporate headquarters in Loveland’s Centerra development.

Growcentia, a spinoff of Colorado State University, occupies 30,000 square feet in the Centerra Industrial IV building at 4545 Viking Way, a 123,000-square-foot building developed by Loveland-based McWhinney. Growcentia previously was located at 500 E. Vine Drive in Fort Collins.

The new facility provides the company with two research-and-development laboratories, two microbiological fermentation manufacturing bays, a blending manufacturing bay, an indoor plant trial and experimentation station, 28-foot clearance warehousing, and shipping capabilities with four loading docks and office space.

Growcentia seeks to maximize soil health to enhance plant health and yields, while minimizing the environmental impacts of agriculture.

The grand opening was attended by Growcentia employees as well as Loveland mayor Jacki Marsh, Loveland economic-development director Kelly Jones and Loveland business development specialist Jack Hill. Growcentia received no incentives from the city for relocating to Loveland, Jones told BizWest.

Marsh, speaking after the ribbon-cutting ceremony, said Growcentia is a good addition to the city.

“It’s amazing,” she said. “It’s one of the companies that’s going to contribute to — hopefully — eradicating climate change. We need people putting their brain power and energy into things like this, so I’m grateful.”

The company’s signature product is Mammoth P, with the “P” standing for phosphorus. Growcentia uses soil microbes to unlock phosphorus and other micronutrients to enhance soil health.

The majority of the company’s business has been in the cannabis space, but the technology has other applications, both for indoor and outdoor agriculture.

Growcentia last summer released Mammoth Garden, targeting the consumer garden market.

Growcentia in 2021 reached about $11 million in revenue, with two years of consecutive double-digit growth, and is profitable, CEO Scott Wiley told BizWest after a ribbon-cutting ceremony. The company employs about 40 people.

“As a startup, we became profitable for the first time in 2020, and then we repeated that in ’21,” Wiley said, noting that such growth and profitability is “pretty rare” for a startup.

“We went from spinout of CSU to an incubator to two consecutive years of growth and profitability,” he said.

Growcentia raised $5.8 million in Series A funding in 2017, Wiley said, having previously raised seed money from San Francisco-based M34 Capital, which enabled the company to license the technology from CSU Ventures.

Growcentia licenses research developed at CSU. Founders include Chairman Matthew Wallenstein, professor and head of the Department of Soil and Crop Sciences at CSU;  Chief Revenue Officer Colin Bell, former research scientist at CSU’s Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory; and Richard Conant, professor, ecosystem science and sustainability, Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory.

“Growcentia is proud to call Northern Colorado home, and we look forward to expanding our nature-based growing solutions in this region,” the founders said in a press release announcing the new facility. “This new, state-of-the-art facility will allow us to accommodate growth for the foreseeable future, increase the complexity and diversity of our product lines, and expand R&D initiatives to serve our domestic and international customers and truly change the way the world is growing.”

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