Indoor ag company names industry veteran new CEO

Indoor agriculture company Local Bounti Corp. has named an industry veteran as its new CEO as its current co-leaders and co-founders shift into new leadership roles.

Anna Fabrega, former Freshly CEO and Amazon executive, will assume her new role June 5. Current co-CEOs and co-founders Craig Hurlbert and Travis Joyner will shift to roles as senior vice president of strategy and chief technology officer, respectively, and maintain their seats on the company board.

Fabrega brings more than two decades of operations, consumer goods and food production experience to Local Bounti, founded in 2018 in Hamilton, Montana. At Freshly, a direct-to-consumer fresh prepared food subscription service, Fabrega also succeeded the company’s founder as CEO and led the rollout of new product lines to meet customer demand.

“I grew up in agriculture — my dad still runs a farm in Panama where he grows teak and coffee — and I believe food should be as local and sustainable as possible,” Fabrega said in a news release. “Local Bounti represents the most innovative and promising approach to getting customers fresh, high-quality, flavorful food from our farms to store shelves.”

Local Bounti uses its patent-pending Stack & Flow Technology to grow food in an environmentally sustainable manner that increases harvest efficiency, limits water usage, relies on minimal pesticides and reduces the carbon footprint of production and distribution. Local Bounti’s indoor farming methods use 90% less land and 90% less water than conventional farming, according to the release.

The company is currently expanding its Georgia facility and has additional facilities under construction in Texas and Washington.

“We are thrilled for Anna to join Local Bounti as our new CEO. Her depth in the retail sector and direct experience scaling up operations is a perfect fit for our business,” Joyner said in the release. “Anna has a keen understanding of how to execute in this operation’s intensive and technologically complex environment, and we look forward to taking Local Bounti’s product offering to the next level.”