United Kingdom
20 August, 2025
The biostimulant company SugaROx has secured £1million in additional funding following its latest seed round extension.
£400,000 of the strategic investment comes from the US-based fertiliser business, The Mosaic Company, alongside continued backing from existing UK-based angel investors and sustainable growth-focused investment funds, the UK Innovation & Science Seed Fund (managed by Future Planet Capital) and Regenerate Ventures, who contributed a further £600,000.
Biostimulants are one of the fastest growing crop input sectors, with market growth estimated at around 11%. The £1 million extension follows a recent £2.4 million grant awarded from the UK’s national innovation agency, Innovate UK, to upscale manufacturing of the company’s first active ingredient, Trehalose-6-Phosphate (T6P).
SugaROx’s T6P biostimulant boosts the yields and resilience of crops by inhibiting SnRK1, an enzyme that signals energy scarcity in the plant. Safety tests were completed in early 2024, confirming a promising regulatory outlook for the proprietary T6P, and led potential market partners to request samples for field trials.
The company is working to launch a T6P wheat biostimulant in the UK market in 2027 and in the EU in 2028. This year the team begun trials in soybean and maize with a view to developing markets in the US and Brazil.
Rothamsted’s Dr Matthew Paul, one of the scientists on whose research the company is founded, said, “I am tremendously pleased that SugaROx is enjoying so much success in translating the benefits of T6P sugar and starch regulation in crops built on our foundation of research and teamwork over 20 years supported by grants from UKRI-BBSRC.”
Explaining the benefits of Mosaic’s investment, Dr Cara Griffiths who splits her time between a research role at Rothamsted and as CTO of SugaROx, added: “With Mosaic we gain access to an established network of trial sites for validation of our first product in the US at scale. Mosaic will also provide us with access to TruResponse®, a digital platform to visualise field results, which will be extremely valuable for our research.”
Mark Robbins, CEO at SugaROx said: “In response to increasing demand for product samples, we decided to accelerate our manufacturing timeline, fast‑tracking the shift from in‑house lab production to a pilot facility. We have the ambition to transform the biostimulants industry with science-based solutions – something that is only achievable in collaboration with other players”.
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