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Lab-Grown Maker Gets $45M Boost for New Factory
Feb 8, 2022 8:10 AM
By Joshua Freedman
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RAPAPORT... Israeli lab-grown producer Lusix has received its first external investment as it advances plans to build a new, larger facility for creating diamonds.
Ragnar and More Investment House, two Israeli funds, have led a $45 million financing round for Lusix, which had previously been bankrolled by founder Benny Landa, the company told Rapaport News Monday. Venture-capital funds Gefen Capital and Maverick Ventures have also made investments, a Lusix spokesperson said. The parties did not disclose further financial details.
More Investment House is owned by the Meirov family, which also runs MID House of Diamonds, an Israeli natural-diamond dealer. The fund’s investment decisions are independent of MID, said Dotan Meirov, chief operating officer at MID.
“This investment will further accelerate Lusix’s growth, in line with the exploding demand for premium lab-grown diamonds [that] Lusix is experiencing,” Lusix said. “This is another milestone on Lusix’s growth path.”
Those expansion plans include the construction of a new production site in the Israeli city of Modi’in. The plant will be several times larger than the current facility in Rehovot, Landa told the Rapaport Diamond Podcast last year. The company plans to open it during the second half of this year.
The news follows Lusix’s recent appointment of Eyal Axelrod as its vice president for sales and marketing. Axelrod was previously a De Beers broker and consultant on the natural-diamond market at I. Hennig & Co.
Image: Benny Landa. (Landa Corporation)
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Tags:
Benny Landa, De Beers, Eyal Axelrod, Gefen Capital, Israel, Joshua Freedman, lab-grown, Lusix, Maverick Ventures, Meirov, MID, MID House of Diamonds, Modi’in, More Investment House, Ragnar, Rehovot
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