A new $50 million investment fund has been launched by Natural Products Canada Ventures to invest in early-stage Canadian companies developing naturally derived alternatives to synthetic products.

NPC Ventures has secured a non-binding term sheet with a significant anchor investor and is actively fundraising toward a first close in the fall, Charlottetown-based NPC said in a statement. 

"NPC Ventures has tapped into something very compelling,” Kristi Miller, Managing Director of NPC Ventures, said in the statement.

“There is tremendous opportunity for Canadian companies to meet this exponential demand for ‘natural’,” added Miller, who is Founder and former national managing director of First West Capital. Under her watch, the firm raised and invested more than $250 million in over 100 businesses. 

The statement says that NPC Ventures fills a gap in the investment landscape with its exclusive emphasis on early-stage Canadian companies developing innovative natural products that are biologically-based.

It is targeting between 16 and 20 investments ranging from $500,000 to $2.5 million in startups in the cleantech, ag-tech, biotech, human and animal health, and water tech sectors.

The new fund develops the work NPC has done to identify, develop and support high-potential companies. In the past four years, NPC has invested in 13 companies, the statement said.