This founder grew up in wine country — now he’s built a platform for wine makers

Growing up in the Hunter Valley, a region of Australia renowned for its fine wine production, Mitchel Fowler never realized he might one day think of an idea that could revolutionize the wine industry. Now, after a long career in finance, he has returned to that heritage to launch a platform to solve the wine industry’s long-running procurement cycle and inventory management problems. 

Ferovinum is both a SaaS platform and a lending platform for wine producers. Wine makers have a problem using conventional B2B lending or banking products, since their inventory can’t be easily lent against. So, Ferovinum turns the wine and spirits produced into a “just-in-time asset” so that producers can focus their capital on growth instead of tying it up in stock, and scale up funding for their production in a way that would be riskier if they used conventional financial products.

Ferovinum’s customers place their inventories on the platform during their production and distribution periods, and then sell them on to resellers.

As Fowler told TechCrunch over a call: “Since the platform carries the stock for the clients end-to-end — throughout the entire value chain — this allows the client’s supply chain to benefit from our supply chain technology, automation, and market access for import and export flows. Thus getting closer to, for instance, exports to the U.S.”

Fowler says the platform can “democratize” financing even for smaller producers. 

The company has now raised $23.2 million (£17.5 million) for global expansion. It claims it has provided £114 million in working capital for the U.K. wine and spirits industry as a result of customers using its platform. 

Ferovinum is also tackling a market where there is little direct competition. Wine and drinks producers often only cobble together various software to run their businesses, and the financing aspect remains separate. 

“There are SaaS tools, like Unleashed, for example, which is wine inventory management software. But the beauty of what we’re building is, it’s end-to-end and sector-specific. So from managing it in the warehouse all the way to delivering and fulfilling to those retailers,” Fowler said.

That’s what attracted Notion Capital, a European SaaS and cloud investment firm, whose general partner Jos White will now join Ferovinum’s board. The round also saw participation from Shaper Capital, Semapa Next and Ferovinum’s existing shareholder group.

The startup’s customers now include two of Edinburgh’s independent distilleries (Holyrood Distillery and Port of Leith Distillery), as well as English sparkling wine producers Ridgeview Wine Estate and Hundred Hills Winery.