Mill Industries, Inc.

Founded in 2019, Mill Industries (Mill) uses design-led technology to cut household food waste. Its fully automated food recycler, the size of a standard kitchen trash bin, dehydrates food waste and scraps, eliminates odors, and reduces volume by ~80%, producing nutrient-rich material for gardens, backyard chickens, or small farms.

The U.S. is the world’s largest end-of-supply-chain food-waste producer, households collectively are the biggest contributors, and food scraps and trimmings are the most prevalent type of food waste. To date, Mill has installed over 30,000 units in homes and small businesses, diverting more than 10 million pounds of waste from landfills and avoiding ~15,000 tons of CO2E. 

Mill now plans to apply its existing technology to new products that address food waste challenges for different segments using different business models. First, excluding farms, commercial sites like grocery stores, schools, hospitals, hotels, stadiums, amusement parks, universities, and food manufacturers produce over 40% percent of U.S. food waste, yet their scale and diversity make effective solutions difficult. Second, Mill’s current residential device, priced at $1,000, is inaccessible to a vast majority of the 100 million households in the U.S., and municipalities and companies that help manage food waste are interested in enabling broader adoption. 

Venn’s PRI will supply Mill with patient, below-market capital to help the company design, test, and manufacture new products that build on its existing technology and to begin deploying those new products with new segments using new business models. The primary purpose of Venn’s PRI is to preserve the natural environment for the benefit of the public by conserving natural resources and directly reducing GHG emissions from food waste, as well as to educate the public.