Irvington, NY — February 19, 2019 – BrightFarms, the leading supplier of local produce to supermarkets, has appointed Steve Campione as its Chief Financial Officer.
“Steve is a world class business leader,” said Paul Lightfoot, BrightFarms’ Chief Executive Officer. “We look forward to benefitting from his expertise in creating the tools, systems and culture to enable the company to smoothly scale nationally.”
Campione has more than 20 years of experience in finance, operations and investment banking. Most recently, he was CFO & COO at Rural Media Group, Inc. where he led the company through multiple capital raises and acquisitions that quadrupled its employee base and operating profits. Prior to his tenure at Rural Media Group, Campione spent a decade on Wall Street raising capital for growth companies and advising clients on strategic mergers and acquisitions.
“I’m thrilled to join the BrightFarms team and to continue the company’s terrific momentum” said Campione. “And I’m particularly excited to contribute my capital raising and mergers and acquisitions experience as we look to accelerate the expansion of BrightFarms’ footprint nationally and to further increase our rate of growth and market leadership.”
BrightFarms builds and operates greenhouse farms near major metropolitan areas to provide supermarkets with a consistent and year-round supply of locally grown produce. The company currently has farms in Pennsylvania, Virginia, Illinois and Ohio. With a one-week freshness advantage, innovative varieties, a more reliable and safe supply chain, and consistently higher category sales, BrightFarms has achieved success in the market with leading national retailers such as Kroger, Ahold, Albertsons and Walmart.
Campione joins BrightFarms following its successful Series D funding round last year, where the company raised $55 million with Cox Enterprises as the lead investor. This financing has enabled continued rapid national expansion of BrightFarms’ network of local and sustainable farms.
For more information about BrightFarms, visit https://www.brightfarms.com.
About BrightFarms
BrightFarms grows local produce, nationwide. BrightFarms finances, builds, and operates local greenhouse farms in partnership with supermarkets, cities, capital sources, and vendors, enabling it to quickly and efficiently eliminate time, distance, and costs from the food supply chain. BrightFarms’ growing methods, a model for the future of scalable, sustainable local farming, uses far less energy, land and water than long distance, centralized and field grown agriculture. Fast Company recognizes BrightFarms as “One of World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies” and one of the “Top 10 Most Innovative Companies in Food” in the world. For more information, please visit www.brightfarms.com.