Pure Harvest Smart Farms announced three senior appointments as the company enters a new phase of strategic growth.
Adrian Almeida has been appointed as the company’s first Chief Operating Officer, joining Pure Harvest from Sensei Ag, the US-based AgriTech Smart Farming company founded by Oracle Co-founder Larry Ellison and physician and scientist Dr. David Agus. There, he served as Chief Operating Officer and Chief Innovation Officer during a successful period of North America-market growth.
Dr Josef Schmidhuber joins as Chief Sustainability Officer, bringing a wealth of international experience at the OECD, FAO, IPCC, World Bank, and European Investment Bank. Dr Schmidhuber’s work has been published in high-impact journals like Nature, PNAS, the Lancet, and Science, as well as in hundreds of books and documents of international organizations. Josef holds an MSc in agricultural economics and a PhD in economics from the Technical University of Munich.
In addition, Andrew Bolter joins Pure Harvest as Chief Financial Officer, having previously served as CFO and member of the board of directors at RA International Group plc, a global support services business with over 1,500 employees. Andrew led the process to successfully list the company on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange in 2018.
Sky Kurtz, CEO and founder of Pure Harvest, said: “I am so pleased to welcome Adrian, Josef, and Andrew to our journey here at Pure Harvest. It is a fantastic vote of confidence in both the company we have built and the wider AgriTech sector in the MENA region to attract talent of such caliber to one of the harshest environments on earth - in many ways, the ultimate proving ground and place of greatest need for our technology. All three have extensive senior management experience leading large, complex organizations and bring a wealth of knowledge and insight to our businesses. Their experience in growing and scaling up businesses will be invaluable to Pure Harvest as we embark on the next phase of our growth journey - bringing our mission to provide year-round, safe and sustainable production of high-quality fresh fruits and vegetables to even more markets and consumers around the world.”
