Saudi-based RedSea agri-tech company appoints new members to board of directors

The Saudi-based sustainable agriculture technology company RedSea announced appointing Larkin Martin and Steve Dauphin to its board of directors on Monday.

Martin is a seventh-generation farmer who manages Martin Farm (Alabama) and is Vice President of The Albemarle Corporation. Both are family businesses with interests in agriculture and timberland. She has held these positions since 1990, a statement from the company said.

She also holds directorial positions at the Soil Health Institute; NYSE-listed Rayonier Inc., a timberland REIT; and Truxton Trust – a private bank. She is the chairman of Servico – a cotton ginning and agricultural services business, and the former chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta and The Cotton Board, the statement added.

Dauphin is a founding partner of Bonaventure Capital, with over 25 years of venture capital investment experience. In the last 10 years, his team focused on “backing values-driven teams on missions to solve historically intractable problems,” the statement said. The firm has invested in the US, UAE, Mexico, Canada, Central America, Peru, Kenya, Sweden, Spain and the Caribbean.

“At the heart of RedSea is its mission to help feed the world sustainably. Our firm is committed to helping the team do this by building a great company, with great products and service, that creates significant value for its stakeholders,” he was quoted as saying in the statement.

The latest appointments follow the recent C-level on-boarding of Bruno de Oliveria as Chief Agricultural Officer and Branko Lovic as Chief Plant Science Officer.

RedSea aims to become an international presence in providing sustainable technologies for hot climates that can tackle food insecurity.

The technologies are currently being used in at least seven countries. They are also used at RedSea’s own facilities, with produce supplied to major national retailers across Saudi Arabia under the Red Sea Farms brand.

The company currently has a partnership with Red Sea Global, and Abu Dhabi’s Silal.