/Graveyard/GreenPath Food

GreenPath Food

Organic produce from ethiopian smallholders

Epitaph

“Here lies GreenPath Food. It cold-chained organic fruit and herbs from hundreds of Ethiopian smallholders to buyers in Europe and the Gulf, on $4.5m from Novastar and development finance. Nobody said why it stopped. The creditors' liquidation was the last harvest left to divide.”

Overview

Born: 2015 (Year)
Died: December 2023 (Month)
Lifespan: 9 years
Fate: Shut down
Headquarters: 🇪🇹 Ethiopia
Category: Agri Tech
Stage at death: Series A
Primary cause: Funding or runway

Death certificate

Timeline

2015Founded
Jacie Jones and Eric Couper start GreenPath Food in Ethiopia's southern highlands
2016First institutional backing
Engineers Without Borders Canada makes a seed investment, its first Ethiopian venture
2018Series A
Novastar Ventures leads a Series A round in the Ethiopian agritech
2019Kib launched
a herbal tea brand is created to use up perishable herb harvests
9 April 2020UK entity incorporated
The Perennial Foods Group UK Limited is registered in England
February 2021Debt facility
MCE Social Capital invests $300,000 as part of a $500,000 revolving facility
19 December 2023Wind-up resolution
shareholders resolve to wind up the UK group company and appoint a voluntary liquidator
10 December 2025Dissolved
final Gazette notice published following liquidation

Autopsy report

Why did GreenPath Food shut down?

GreenPath Food was an Ethiopian organic produce company founded in 2015 by Jacie Jones and Eric Couper, working with smallholder farms in Ethiopia's southern highlands and exporting EU-certified organic fruit, vegetables and herbs to Europe, the UK and the UAE. It was the trading brand of The Perennial Foods Group and raised roughly $4.5m led by Novastar Ventures. On 19 December 2023 shareholders of the group's UK company, The Perennial Foods Group UK Limited, passed an extraordinary resolution to wind the company up and appointed a voluntary liquidator; the liquidation ran until the return of final meeting in September 2025 and the company was formally dissolved on 10 December 2025. No press coverage explaining why the business ended was found.

What GreenPath Food attempted

GreenPath contracted smallholder farmers in southern Ethiopia and helped them convert monocrop plots into intercropped, regeneratively managed 'food forests', then aggregated, cold-chained, packed and exported the resulting organic produce - green beans, papayas, avocados, lemongrass and herbs - to buyers in the EU, UK and Middle East. It described itself as Ethiopia's first EU-organic-certified fresh produce company and managed the whole supply chain. In 2019 it added Kib, a herbal tea brand, to absorb perishable herb volumes.

What worked

Engineers Without Borders Canada made a seed investment in 2016, its first Ethiopian venture. Novastar Ventures led a Series A in 2018, with DEG (KfW) and Oxfam's Enterprise Development Programme also listed as backers. MCE Social Capital added a $300,000 debt investment in February 2021 as part of a $500,000 revolving facility, at which point the company reported working with 265 partner farmers as of December 2020, later described as several hundred partner farms. It built a demonstration and training site and a seedling nursery in southern Ethiopia, and secured on-farm cold-chain equipment.

Early warning signs

UK Companies House records show the group's UK entity filed its last set of annual accounts for the year ended 31 December 2020, its final confirmation statement in April 2022, and received a first Gazette notice for compulsory strike-off on 7 March 2023 - suspended two weeks later - before the voluntary winding-up resolution nine months after that.

What happened

Companies House's insolvency record for THE PERENNIAL FOODS GROUP UK LIMITED (12554032) states case type 'Creditors voluntary liquidation', winding up commenced 19 December 2023, with joint liquidators Andrew Richard Bailey and Martin Charles Armstrong of 5 Park Court, Pyrford Road, West Byfleet, Surrey KT14 6SD appointed that day, and expected dissolution 10 December 2025. The London Gazette carries the matching sequence of notices: Meetings of Creditors (11 December 2023), then Resolutions for Winding-up, Appointment of Liquidators and Notices to Creditors (all 22 December 2023), then Notices of Intended Dividends on 21 March 2024 and 1 July 2024. The company had no registered charges (0 outstanding, 0 satisfied), so there was no secured lender. The UK entity had already gone quiet before that: its last accounts were for the year to 31 December 2020, its last confirmation statement was dated 8 April 2022, and Companies House began compulsory strike-off action with a First Gazette notice on 7 March 2023, suspended on 21 March 2023.

Lessons for future builders

Buying from hundreds of smallholders means carrying their working capital as well as your own, and export produce pays late. When the end is a creditors' liquidation rather than an orderly wind-down, the cash gap had been open for a while before anyone outside could see it.