PepsiCo and N-Drip partner to provide water-saving, crop-enhancing benefits to farmers around the world

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Mar 16, 2022, 08:00 ET

The two companies collaborate to create sustainable change through unique drip irrigation technology

PURCHASE, N.Y. and KFAR SABA, Israel, March 16, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- PepsiCo (NASDAQ: PEP) and N-Drip have announced a partnership to help farmers around the world adopt game-changing technology in water efficiency across 10,000 hectares (25,000 acres) by 2025.

Around the world, a countless number of farmers make use of flood, or trench, irrigation to bring water to their crops, which floods the field at regular intervals, losing up to 70 percent of the water used. This technique is still deployed on 85 percent of all irrigated fields worldwide, roughly 600 million acres, even in water-scarce locations. However, alternatives to flood irrigation are too expensive for many farmers to use and prohibit these farmers from selling their low-margin crops at a profit.

A replacement for flood or trench irrigation, Israeli-headquartered N-Drip's high-efficiency irrigation system is powered by gravity and harnesses the water-saving benefits of high-pressure drip irrigation, but with low energy, operating and maintenance demands—making it more accessible to all types of farmers and nearly all types of crops. Farmers using N-Drip routinely achieve significant water savings, see larger crop yields, and reduce the need for expensive fertilizers. In addition, by converting from flood irrigation to N-Drip's drip irrigation system, carbon (CO2) emissions can be reduced by as much as 83 percent and methane emissions by as much as 78 percentⁱ.

"We're thrilled to partner with PepsiCo with the goal of removing barriers to access, introducing and implementing N-Drip to farmers around the world," said Eran Pollak, Chief Executive Officer, N-Drip. "As PepsiCo sources crops from farms of all types and sizes, N-Drip's proprietary technology allows our partnership to make precise irrigation accessible to all types of farmers, from those with massive farms to those with one-acre plots."

As a global beverage and convenient foods company, PepsiCo sources over 25 crops across 60 countries and is an active leader in the scaling and adoption of regenerative farming practices under its pep+ (PepsiCo Positive) transformation. Leveraging its reach and network of farmers across its agricultural footprint, PepsiCo aims to scale N-Drip's technology to help improve farmer livelihoods with higher yields, reduced water consumption, and reduced CO2 emissions. This effort will contribute to PepsiCo's pep+ Positive Agriculture goals of improving direct agricultural supply chain water use efficiency by 15% by 2025 (against a 2015 baseline) in areas of high-water-risk, spreading regenerative agriculture practices across 7 million acres of farmland, and strengthening the livelihoods of more than 250,000 people in its agricultural supply chain.

"To date, we've implemented N-Drip's technology with farmers in India, Vietnam, and the U.S., and saw improved crop yields, reduced fertilizer usage, and 50% less water consumed compared to flood irrigation," said Rob Meyers, VP, Sustainable Agriculture, PepsiCo. "We're thrilled to grow our partnership further by scaling N-Drip's technology to make an even bigger impact across our agricultural footprint."

The partnership was sourced by PepsiCo Labs, PepsiCo's technology venturing arm, which works to identify and embed breakthrough technology start-ups into PepsiCo's operations to help solve complex, real-world problems and meet business goals at a global scale.

N-Drip is privately held. The company has raised $40 million to date from a mix of strategic and financial investors in the U.S. and Israel.

About N-Drip
Currently doing business in 17 countries, N-Drip's three main business hubs are Australia, India, and the southwestern United States. The company's U.S. operations are headquartered in Arizona. With more than 70 current employees engaged in sales, R&D, manufacturing, and engineering, among other functions, the company has experienced growth in staff, distribution, and revenue in each quarter since it began deploying the gravity-powered irrigation methodology in 2019.

N-Drip's Founder and Chairman is Professor Uri Shani, formerly head of the Israel Water Authority. CEO Eran Pollak served as senior director of the budget division in the Israel Ministry of Finance. Both are based in the company's headquarters located in Kfar Saba, Israel. Visit www.ndrip.com.

About PepsiCo
PepsiCo products are enjoyed by consumers more than one billion times a day in more than 200 countries and territories around the world. PepsiCo generated more than $79 billion in net revenue in 2021, driven by a complementary beverage and convenient foods portfolio that includes Lay's, Doritos, Cheetos, Gatorade, Pepsi-Cola, Mountain Dew, Quaker, and SodaStream. PepsiCo's product portfolio includes a wide range of enjoyable foods and beverages, including many iconic brands that generate more than $1 billion each in estimated annual retail sales.

Guiding PepsiCo is our vision to Be the Global Leader in Beverages and Convenient Foods by Winning with PepsiCo Positive (pep+). pep+ is our strategic end-to-end transformation that puts sustainability at the center of how we will create value and growth by operating within planetary boundaries and inspiring positive change for planet and people. For more information, visit www.pepsico.com.

PepsiCo Cautionary Statement
Statements in this communication that are "forward-looking statements" are based on currently available information, operating plans and projections about future events and trends. Terminology such as "aim," "anticipate," "believe," "drive," "estimate," "expect," "expressed confidence," "forecast," "future," "goal," "guidance," "intend," "may," "objective," "outlook," "plan," "position," "potential," "project," "seek," "should," "strategy," "target," "will" or similar statements or variations of such words and other similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements, although not all forward-looking statements contain such terms. Forward-looking statements inherently involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those predicted in such forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to: the impact of COVID-19; future demand for PepsiCo's products; damage to PepsiCo's reputation or brand image; water scarcity; disruption of PepsiCo's manufacturing operations or supply chain, including increased commodity, packaging, transportation, labor and other input costs; political or social conditions in the markets where PepsiCo's products are made, manufactured, distributed or sold; climate change or measures to address climate change; failure to comply with applicable laws and regulations; and potential liabilities and costs from litigation, claims, legal or regulatory proceedings, inquiries or investigations. For additional information on these and other factors that could cause PepsiCo's actual results to materially differ from those set forth herein, please see PepsiCo's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recent annual report on Form 10-K and subsequent reports on Forms 10-Q and 8-K. Investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on any such forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date they are made. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

ⁱ https://f1000research.com/articles/8-2023

CONTACT: Lauren Levine, [email protected]

SOURCE PepsiCo, Inc.