Benzinga | Mar 2, 2021 05:29AM EST

AppHarvest Announced it Acquired Flagship Morehead, Ky. Controlled Environment Agriculture Facility -

AppHarvest, Inc. (NASDAQ:APPH) announced that it has purchased the Morehead, Ky. controlled environment agriculture (CEA) facility and the property on which it is located from Equilibrium, a leading sustainability investment firm, for $125 million. Equilibrium had worked in conjunction with AppHarvest to acquire the property and funded construction of the facility to lease to AppHarvest.

"The purchase of our first CEA facility allows us to reduce our operating costs by eliminating the previous lease expense and creates an opportunity to leverage a portion of this asset with low-interest debt that will create a positive return on equity for investors. As a testament to its climate resilience, our Morehead farm just set a performance record for harvesting, even as many other operators suffered weather-related challenges," said AppHarvest President David Lee.

The AppHarvest team in Morehead exceeded a new performance threshold for the facility, harvesting more than 120,000 pounds of tomatoes in a single day during the week of February 22 on the 30 acres currently planted with Beefsteak tomatoes. The company expects to begin harvesting the first crop of an additional 30 acres of the Tomatoes on the Vine variety early in the second quarter, which will further expand volume.

"I applaud the hardworking team who really stepped up last week to accelerate our progress to provide customers with nutritious, chemical pesticide-free, affordable U.S.-grown tomatoes that can be delivered much more efficiently to nearly 70 percent of the country's population, which is within a day's drive of our farm here in Appalachia," said AppHarvest Founder & CEO Jonathan Webb. "Between the pandemic and the continued extreme weather events that have disrupted our food supplyespecially of fresh food sensitive to spoilingit's clearer than ever that the climate-resilient solution AppHarvest provides is critical to ensuring a reliable domestic food system."