Raphael Stevens

A new coalition called Organizations for Pay Equity Now, or OPEN Imperative, launched with the goal of eliminating the gender pay gap among pre-IPO start-ups by 2027.
More than 200 founders, CEOs and investors have joined the coalition, according to OPEN Imperative, including Prezzee, Landed, Hearken and newly public Nextdoor.
OPEN Imperative members pledge to reduce gender pay gaps by 60% in the group’s first year of operation.
Women in the U.S. made 83 cents for every dollar men made in 2020, according to Census Bureau data for full-time, year-round workers ages 15 and older.

A jabot collar is seen placed on the Fearless Girl statue outside of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in honor of recently passed Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States Ruth Bader Ginsburg in Manhattan, New York City, U.S., September 21, 2020.
Andrew Kelly | Reuters

A new coalition called Organizations for Pay Equity Now, or OPEN Imperative, launched Tuesday with the goal of eliminating the gender pay gap among pre-IPO start-ups by 2027.
More than 200 founders, CEOs and investors have joined the coalition, according to OPEN Imperative. Member start-ups and venture capital firms include digital gift card company Prezzee, mortgage lender Landed, newsroom consulting firm Hearken and newly public Nextdoor, a neighborhood-based social networking platform.

“What’s so exciting about working with pre-IPO companies is these are the fastest-growing companies in the world,” Emily Sweet, lead of OPEN Imperative, said in a panel Monday.
“These are the future CEOs and founders of larger enterprises and if they can start baking in these practices from the ground up at these early stages, it will continue to grow with the company and continue to make impact,” Sweet added.
OPEN Imperative members pledge to reduce gender pay gaps by 60% in the group’s first year of operation. The initiative will provide members with a confidential audit of members’ gender pay equity performance.
Access to compensation data is the barrier to closing the gender pay gap most commonly cited by business leaders, according to an OpenComp survey of 500 start-up CEOs, CFOs and HR executives.
“Expose the gap so you can actually activate some change,” OPEN Imperative founding partner and CEO and co-founder of OpenComp Thanh Nguyen said. “When you bury the data or you don’t seek the data out, then you’re not going to do anything with it.”

Other best practices discussed during Monday’s panel include sharing pay ranges upfront and not asking candidates about salary history. 
The announcement Tuesday coincides with this year’s Equal Pay Day in the U.S. The symbolic day marks how far into the year women would need to work to make what men earned the previous year.
Women in the U.S. made 83 cents for every dollar men made in 2020, according to Census Bureau data for full-time, year-round workers ages 15 and older. When disaggregated by race and ethnicity, women of color experience an even wider wage gap, according to AAUW.
If the coalition meets its goal of reducing pay gaps by 60%, Equal Pay Day for its members could shift to Jan. 31, 2023, which is 43 days sooner than this year.
Equitable compensation “helps to retain employees, it increases productivity, increases goodwill between employees and employers,” said C. Nicole Mason, OPEN Imperative advisory board member and president and CEO of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. “So it’s really a win-win for both employers and employees.” More

Starbucks unveiled the latest steps it’s taking to reduce its disposable cup use.
By the end of next year, Starbucks customers will be able to use their own personal reusable cups for drive-thru and mobile orders in the United States and Canada.
Single-use cups account for 20% of the company’s global waste, but it’s faced an uphill battle switching over to reusable versions.

A protestor walks past a caricature made of coffee cups outside of the Starbucks Annual Shareholders Meeting at McCaw Hall, on March 21, 2018 in Seattle, Washington.
Stephen Brashear | Getty Images

When Starbucks reopened its Seattle headquarters last week, its returning workforce found that the coffee chain’s disposable paper and plastic cups had been replaced by reusable options.
It’s a change that the company is trying to bring to the rest of its cafes worldwide, which run through roughly 7 billion disposable cups every year.

Ahead of its annual shareholder meeting on Wednesday, Starbucks unveiled the latest steps it’s taking to reduce its disposable cup use. Those include more than 20 different iterations of tests across eight markets to figure out the best ways to ditch the single-use cup.
By the end of next year, Starbucks customers will be able to use their own personal reusable cups for every Starbucks order in the United States and Canada. That includes drive-thru and mobile orders, which are currently excluded.
“We’re doing so many tests to understand how that is most convenient for our customers and won’t slow the drive-thru line down for the person behind you and is also operationally friendly for our partners,” Amelia Landers, Starbucks’ vice president of product innovation, said in an interview.
The company has a broader goal to cut its waste and carbon emissions from direct operations in half by 2030 as it aims to become “resource positive” one day. And by 2025, Starbucks wants all customers to have easy access to reusable cups provided by the company or those that they bring from home.
Disposable cups and lids make up 40% of the company’s packaging waste, according to its chief sustainability officer, Michael Kobori.

“The cup is 20% of our waste footprint globally, but more than that, it is an icon,” he said. “This is Starbucks’ icon all around the world, and if we can replace this disposable cup, this symbol of waste, with this reusable, we completely change people’s mindset. And at Starbucks, we can really set an example and change the whole industry.”
But getting customers to ditch single-use cups has proved to be tricky so far for the company. Starbucks previously set a goal in 2008 to have a quarter of consumers use reusable cups by 2015, but the company fell short of that benchmark.
“What we’ve learned from our consumer research is that even the most ardent champions of sustainability really do not claim that they carry a reusable cup around with them,” Landers said.
Starbucks has offered a 10-cent discount on every order for a personal cup or mug since the 1980s, but few customers take them up on the offer. This year, the company is running different tests across the U.S. to see how coffee drinkers respond to different financial incentives and deterrents, like a 10-cent fee for single-use cups and a 50-cent discount for a reusable mug.
Starbucks is also planning to try out new cup-washing stations in cafes in O’ahu, Hawaii, and on Arizona State University’s campus. Customers will be able to have their personal cups cleaned before ordering their beverage.
The company is testing borrow-a-cup programs in Japan, Singapore and London. The designated reusable cups were designed to be returned to stores, professionally cleaned and reused by other customers. The company tested the program in Seattle already, where customers paid a deposit for every cup and received their $1 back when they returned it.
In South Korea, Starbucks has already pledged to discontinue single-use cups entirely by 2025. Four stores in Jeju and 12 locations in Seoul have already switched over to eliminating all disposable cups. Initial tests in Jeju diverted an estimated 200,000 single-use cups from landfills in the first three months, according to Starbucks.
Starbucks’ commitments to social causes, including racial justice and climate change, have made the company popular with investors who take into account environmental, social and corporate governance when picking stocks. However, shares of the stock have fallen 26% over the last 12 months as the company battles higher costs and macroeconomic uncertainties, such as the conflict in Ukraine, weigh on the broader market. Starbucks has a market value of $91.1 billion.

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Construction of facilities focused on EV batteries come at a time when some major economies are looking to move away from vehicles based on gasoline and diesel.
Northvolt says Northvolt Drei — “drei” is three in German — will be its third gigafactory.
The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, is targeting a 100% reduction in CO2 emissions from cars and vans by 2035.

A lithium-ion prismatic cell battery from Northvolt, photographed on Feb. 17, 2022.
Mikael Sjoberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Northvolt said Tuesday it would look to build a gigafactory in Germany, with the firm hoping the facility’s first batteries will be produced in 2025.
In a statement, the Stockholm-headquartered battery maker said the Northvolt Drei plant would be located in Heide, northern Germany, and provide lithium-ion batteries for the European market.

Northvolt said the plant’s “potential production capacity” was slated to be 60 gigawatt hours per year, which would be “sufficient for some one million electric vehicles.”
The firm said Northvolt Drei — “drei” is three in German — would be its third gigafactory. Gigafactories are facilities that produce batteries for electric vehicles on a large scale. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been widely credited as coining the term.
Northvolt said the location of the factory in the state of Schleswig-Holstein would enable it to tap into the area’s energy grid.
It described the grid as being “characterized by a surplus of electricity generated by onshore and offshore wind power and reinforced by clean energy provided through grid interconnections to Denmark and Norway.”
Northvolt was founded in 2016 and has attracted investment from Goldman Sachs and Volkswagen, among others.

“It matters how we produce a battery cell,” Peter Carlsson, Northvolt’s CEO, said Tuesday. “If you use coal in your production, you embed a fair amount of CO2 into your battery, but if we use clean energy, we can build a very sustainable product,” Carlsson said.
“Our philosophy is that new energy-intensive industries, such as battery manufacturing, should be established in actual geographical proximity to where the clean energy is produced.”

Read more about electric vehicles from CNBC Pro

Northvolt is not alone in looking to establish a gigafactory in Germany, an industrial and economic powerhouse that’s home to a highly skilled labor force. Tesla is working on its Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg, for example.
Elsewhere, VW — which in Dec. 2021 said it had a stake of roughly 20% in Northvolt — wants to develop a number of its own gigafactories in Europe, including one in the German state of Lower Saxony.
Further afield, on Monday Ford said it had signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding with South Korea’s SK On Co. and Turkey’s Koç Holding.
The MOU relates to the establishment of a joint venture centered around the development of a commercial EV battery facility near the Turkish capital of Ankara. If all goes to plan, it’s hoped production at the plant could begin by the middle of this decade.
Ford said the JV had support from the Turkish government and would have a capacity ranging between 30 to 45 gigawatt hours per year.
Efforts to establish facilities focused on EV batteries come at a time when major economies are looking to reduce the environmental footprint of road-based transportation and move away from vehicles based on gasoline and diesel.
The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, is targeting a 100% reduction in CO2 emissions from cars and vans by 2035. Turkey, where the Ford-backed battery facility would be located, is not part of the EU.
The U.K., which left the EU at the end of January 2020, wants to stop the sale of new diesel and gasoline cars and vans by 2030. It will require, from 2035, all new cars and vans to have zero-tailpipe emissions. More

Oil rigs work on platforms in Gaoyu Lake in Gaoyou in east China’s Jiangsu province Friday, Sept. 17, 2021.
Barcroft Media | Getty Images

Oil registered heavy losses Tuesday, building on Monday’s decline, as myriad factors weighed on sentiment, including talks between Russia and Ukraine, a potential slowdown in Chinese demand and unwinding of trades ahead of the Federal Reserve’s expected rate hike on Wednesday.
Both West Texas Intermediate crude, the U.S. oil benchmark, and global benchmark Brent crude were below $100 a barrel during Tuesday morning trading on Wall Street, a far cry from the more than $130 a barrel just over a week ago.

WTI dropped 7.6% to trade at $95.26 per barrel, after declining 5.78% on Monday. Brent traded 6.9% lower at $99.54 a barrel, accelerating Monday’s 5.12% decline.
“Growth concerns from the Ukraine-Russia stagflation wave, and FOMC hike this week, and hopes that progress will be made in Ukraine-Russia negotiations” are weighing on prices, said Jeffrey Halley, senior market analyst at Oanda. “It seems like the old adage that the best cure for high prices, is high prices, is as strong as ever,” he added, noting that he believes the top is in for oil prices.
Crude surged above $100 per barrel for the first time in years the day Russia invaded Ukraine, and prices continued to climb as the conflict intensified.
WTI hit a high of $130.50 a barrel on March 7, while Brent traded as high as $139.26 per barrel. Prices jumped as traders feared that Russia’s energy exports would be disrupted. So far the U.S. and Canada have banned Russian energy imports, while the U.K. has said it will phase out imports from the country.
But other nations in Europe, which are dependent on Russia’s oil and gas, have not enacted similar moves.

While self-sanctioning has happened to a certain extent, experts say Russian energy is still finding buyers, including from India.
China’s latest moves to curb the spread of Covid-19 are also having an impact on prices. The nation is the world’s largest oil importer, so any slowdown in demand will hit prices.
A deal with Iran could also add new barrels of oil to the market. Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergi Lavrov is in favor of resuming the deal, according to Reuters.
Oil has been especially volatile in recent sessions, whipsawing between gains and losses with every new geopolitical development.
As Tamas Varga from brokerage PVM summarized: “Is it the mother of all corrections or the market is turning increasingly confident that a significant supply shock will be avoided?”

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Macy’s is preparing to overhaul its website and train some of its workforce to be personal stylists, in a bid to win more customers.
Macy’s recently underwent a review of its business with the help of outside consultancy AlixPartners, to determine whether it made sense for the retailer to separate its e-commerce arm from its stores.
Shoppers will soon be met with a personalized website landing page, based on each visitor’s past shopping history.

Macy’s store in Herald Square in New York.
Scott Mlyn | CNBC

Macy’s is preparing to overhaul its website and train some of its workforce to be personal stylists, in a bid to win more customers searching for the latest fashion trends, the department store chain announced Tuesday.
The retailer hopes to offer a more customized shopping experience, with one-on-one attention from staff in stores and easier navigation online. It’s an effort to better compete with other fashion retailers — from its sprawling department store rivals, to boutique clothing shops, to other online-only fashion players that specialize in offering style advice.

Macy’s recently underwent a review of its business with the help of outside consultancy AlixPartners, to determine whether it made sense for the retailer to separate its e-commerce arm from its stores. Macy’s won’t be pursuing any such split, it said last month. But in concluding the review, the department store chain found room for improvements both online and in its more than 500 namesake department stores.
Rich Lennox, Macy’s chief brand officer, said in an interview that while Macy’s has already invested heavily in its digital presence and social media strategy, the retailer was looking to better articulate to customers how it’s distinct from competitors.
Macy’s will be rolling out new branding both in stores and online under a new motto: “Own Your Style.”
“What we were looking for was sort of a unifying customer truth,” he said. “Because we want to acquire younger customers, but we also need to look after our older customers and our more established high-value customers.”
Macy’s will also train its employees to help customers one-on-one with style choices. Certain employees will be enlisted into Macy’s “Style Crew,” the company said, and they will be able to earn commission for helping rack up sales for their participation in the program and for their social media posts that lead to transactions.

Plus, for all of its store employees, Macy’s dress code will be loosened so that staff can incorporate their own personal style choices into what they wear every day, Lennox said.
Macy’s current dress code is best described as business casual, according to a spokeswoman. Now, clothing choices will vary, based on an employee’s role within the company. For example, an employee in the general selling area can choose a more casual look, with their favorite jeans and sneakers. While a staff member in jewelry might wear a blazer with flashy accessories.
In stores, Macy’s will be introducing digital screens that display rotating style tips and outfit inspiration for shoppers, who can then find those same clothing items and accessories for purchase nearby.
Macy’s declined to comment on how much money it would be spending on these initiatives. A spokeswoman said the retailer doesn’t disclose that level of detail in its financials.

Macy’s website gets a makeover

The changes fold into a broader three-year plan for Macy’s, announced in February 2020 and named Polaris, which called for accelerating digital growth, closing underperforming shops and investing in its best stores, thereby improving profits.
Though some progress was stalled due to the Covid pandemic, Chief Executive Jeff Gennette said in late February that Macy’s is a more digitally-led business today than it was in 2019. In that vein, the department store is preparing to launch a digital marketplace where it will allow third-party brands to market their goods, positioning it as more of a rival to Amazon or Etsy.
Macy’s digital sales represented 35% of net sales for the 12 months ended Jan. 30, up 10 percentage points from 2019 levels. Nordstrom’s digital business, for comparison, made up 42% of net sales in fiscal 2021. While Kohl’s said its online business accounted for 32% of total revenue last year.
Macy’s net sales for fiscal 2021 totaled $24.46 billion, down slightly from the $24.56 billion that Macy’s reported in 2019. For fiscal 2022, the company is forecasting revenue growth of no more than 1%.
As part of the changes announced Tuesday, shoppers will soon be met with a personalized website landing page, based on each visitor’s past shopping history. An upgraded dashboard will show loyalty members how many rewards points they’ve accumulated, upcoming orders and unique style recommendations.
“There’s going to be an elevated digital experience,” Lennox said. “There will be simplified global navigation, a refreshed modern search bar [and] a personalized customer dashboard.”
Jefferies analyst Stephanie Wissink said Macy’s strategy to focus on accelerating its Polaris goals rather than forging ahead with an operational split is “prudent.” 2022 is an important year for the department store chain to “prove that its improved performance is sustainable,” she said.
With its push into personal styling, Macy’s could position itself as a bigger rival to a company like Stitch Fix, which curates boxes of clothing based on a customer’s taste and brand preferences. Department store chain Nordstrom is also known for the extra attention it pays to customer service and one-on-one fashion advice. It’s something that other high-end chains such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Bloomingdale’s, which Macy’s owns, go the extra mile for.
Facing a litany of challenges including inflation and ongoing supply chain disruptions, Macy’s hopes to be a destination for consumers who are looking for fresh new looks as they head back to offices, parties, weddings and more this year.
“Our business model is built on having a great selection of brands where we can position ourselves within this style-help territory,” said Lennox. “That’s what Macy’s has always done very well, and we’re going to get much better at doing it.”

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Vertical farming companies Bowery Farming and Plenty are pushing beyond lettuce and traditional salad ingredients.
Starting Tuesday, customers will be able to buy new Bowery strawberries at a few gourmet grocers in New York City.
The berries, which taste the same during the peak of summer and depths of winter, are part of an ambitious effort to change how fruits and vegetables are grown and how Americans eat.

Bowery Farming’s Chief Commercial Officer Katie Seawell holds up two different varieties of strawberries grown by the vertical farming company in its Kearny, NJ farm. The company is debuting berries as part of a limited release, as it pushes beyond leafy greens.
Melissa Repko | CNBC

KEARNY, New Jersey — Inside of a warehouse in this factory town neighboring Newark, thousands of strawberries grow in rows beneath bright lights.
This is one of Bowery Farming’s research and development centers, and these berries are destined for a second life in the big city.

Starting Tuesday, customers will be able to buy the fruit less than a dozen miles away at a few gourmet grocers in New York City. They will star in dishes at some of the city’s top restaurants crafted by celebrity chefs.
Bowery will sell the strawberries for the first time as part of a limited release. But the berries, which taste the same during the peak of summer and depths of winter, are part of an ambitious effort to change how fruits and vegetables are grown and how Americans eat. Crops grown in vertical farms are typically stacked in rows from floor to ceiling in buildings near urban centers. That results in larger yields of fresher, higher-quality produce delivered to city grocery stores a few days after it is picked.
Vertical farming companies have used the tech-based approach to produce lettuce and herbs. Now, they are looking to strawberries and other crops to win a larger share of grocers’ shelves and consumers’ stomachs. At first, the berries will be pricier than the average supermarket offering. But indoor-farming companies hope to expand their output and use automation to harvest the berries, which could bring prices down.
One of Bowery’s competitors, Plenty, said Tuesday that it plans to build an indoor strawberry farm to serve customers and retailers in the Northeast with major berry grower Driscoll’s. Their rivals include venture-backed start-ups AeroFarms, PlantLab and BrightFarms.
Christine Zimmermann-Loessl, chair of the Association for Vertical Farming, said companies must prove they can grow a wide variety of fruits and vegetables to become a more meaningful part of the food supply.

“With salad, you cannot feed the world,” said Zimmermann, who runs the Munich, Germany-based nonprofit and advocacy group. “Nobody can eat that much salad.”
Bowery wants to make food more delicious, too.
“Imagine having a beautiful, fresh-tasting flavorful strawberry in February,” said Susan MacIsaac, Bowery’s senior vice president of agscience. “It really opens up a whole new way, a whole new world of eating. I think we all know we need to eat more fruits and vegetables, but often they’re less than palatable.”

At Bowery’s indoor farms, arugula, baby butter and other leafy green varieties grow in stacked rows from floor to ceiling. The company also sells rotating offerings, called Farmer’s Selection, based on the season.
Melissa Repko | CNBC

A new spin on farming

Investors are pouring money into agriculture technology companies at a time when food’s price and availability are on the minds of more retailers and consumers.
Inflation has pushed up food prices by 7.9% over the past 12 months, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data reported this month. The pandemic left some grocery shelves bare and underscored the complexities of the supply chain. In recent weeks, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has illustrated the risks of relying on other countries to produce energy or grow food.
“Look at the last two years, the number of disruptions that we are all having to deal with in our daily lives,” said Soren Bjorn, president of Driscoll’s of the Americas. “In the fresh produce industry, we are very, very dependent on the climate and the free movement of goods around the world. It turns out that some of those supply chains may have been a little bit more vulnerable than anybody thought, and it’s not that difficult to imagine that these things could get worse.”
With vertical farming, produce is grown without pesticides, with less water and in farms that are only a short drive from consumers. That means fewer hours on a truck, which decreases the fuel used and increases odds of consumers eating fresher food and throwing less away.
Advocates see vertical farming as a more sustainable way to expand food supply for growing global population, particularly as climate change transforms weather patterns.

The farms account for a tiny percentage of the produce that Americans buy and eat, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That definition includes tomatoes and vegetables seen in grocery stores such as broccoli, lettuce, sweet corn and carrots, but does not include corn that is fed to animals or becomes a food ingredient in items such as tortilla chips.
The total value of vegetables grown and sold in 2019 was about $18.9 billion. Within that, the total value of vegetables grown under protection and sold — a category that includes greenhouses and areas grown under temporary covers — was roughly $702.5 million in 2019, the most recent agriculture census available. Vertical farming is just a portion of that, and the federal government doesn’t specifically track it.
Yet the young industry has already gotten buy-in from some of the biggest names in food. Walmart, the country’s largest grocer by revenue, recently invested in Plenty, and it carries some of Bowery’s leafy greens in its stores.
Bowery counts famous chefs Jose Andres, Tom Colicchio and David Barber among its investors.
On Singapore Airlines, passengers this spring in first and business classes departing Newark and New York City can find baby bok choy and arugula that accompany their meals from AeroFarms, which grows them about 5 miles from Newark Liberty International Airport. The airline began buying produce from AeroFarms in 2019.
A spokesperson for Singapore Airlines said the carrier plans to announce deals with other vertical farms later this year for flights from other major U.S. airports. The airline, which operates some of the world’s longest flights, is trying to find ways to reduce its carbon footprint, including sourcing local food. 

Bowery Farming will sell strawberries for the first time at a few gourmet grocery stores in New York City. They will also be on the menu at some celebrity chefs’ restaurants.
Melissa Repko | CNBC

Breaking into berries

Bowery grows its strawberries in buildings that resemble a blend of a science lab and large indoor garden. Agriculture specialists dressed in lab coats, booties and hair nets check on their crops. Bright lights, intricate watering systems and whirring ventilation help create a stable growing environment that doesn’t change — even when sleet and snow fall or summer temperatures blaze outside.
Its New Jersey research and development farm is located in Kearny, about 11 miles west of New York City. It has another farm in Nottingham, Maryland, near Baltimore. It also has three new commercial farms underway in Atlanta, Dallas and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
The berries are more complex to grow than leafy greens. With lettuces, leaves can be grown and picked. Strawberries must go through more steps: developing leaves, flowering and turning into a fruit that is harvested. That takes more time — and the help of bees, which are used to pollinate flowers.
MacIsaac said Bowery narrowed the field of varietals to choose ones would thrive indoors and have a pleasing texture and taste.
It landed on two types: wild and garden berries, which will be sold side-by-side in a package that’s designed as an experience. Each pack includes a description of tasting notes similar to what a consumer might read at a wine tasting or a gourmet coffee shop.
Garden berries are classic, with a “balance of sweetness and tartness,” MacIsaac said. Wild berries are more distinct, with floral and tropical notes, she said.
They will be available at Eataly locations and Mercado Little Spain in New York City and featured in desserts at Colicchio’s Craft New York and Andres’ restaurants, Lena and Spanish Diner. The strawberries will appear at other retailers and restaurants later in the spring, the company said.
Each pack comes at a lofty price — $14.99 for 8 ounces.
Yet Bowery said it wants to scale its strawberry business, so they are sold not only to foodies — but also to shoppers at mainstream grocery stores. Its lettuces are carried by retailers such as Walmart, Amazon-owned Whole Foods and Albertsons.
The company said the pack is the first phase of its commercial rollout. “As we move on to our scale phase, our goal is to offer strawberries at a price and value that unlocks scale without compromising on flavor,” it said in a statement.
Last month, Bowery acquired Traptic. The company uses artificial intelligence and high-powered cameras to identify crops at peak ripeness and has robotic arms that can harvest even fragile fruits like tomatoes and strawberries.
Plenty’s first dedicated strawberry farm will be operating by the end of 2023, CEO Arama Kukutai said. The company, which is working with Driscoll’s, hopes to sell its berries at grocers in early 2024, he said. It has not shared the specific location.
The two companies kicked off a joint venture to develop and grow the berries in 2020. It will mark a geographic expansion for Plenty, which only has commercial farms in California. So far, Plenty and Driscoll’s have grown strawberries in an indoor plant science research facility in Laramie, Wyoming — but have not sold them.
Bjorn of Driscoll’s said the Northeast is one of the largest berry markets for the company, so it was a natural place to start. Yet he said the approach would work well in other major markets, such as Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Singapore and Hong Kong, where consumers have a big appetite for berries — but rely on pricey shipments from far away.
Strawberries are an ideal puzzle for the vertical farming industry to solve, he said. The delicate fruits thrive in few places, such as the coasts of California and Chile and the foothills of the French Alps. They rely on fluctuating temperatures, such as cool nights and warmer days, to get the right flavor and texture. If it’s too hot or humid, the fruit gets mushy and loses its taste.
“In the indoor environment, every day would be a perfect day,” he said. “So that is one of the opportunities.”
–CNBC’s Leslie Josephs contributed to this story.

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Covid cases are rising in Europe with an increasing number attributed to a “stealth” subvariant of the omicron strain.
Covid cases have increased dramatically in the U.K. in recent weeks, and Germany continues to mark record high daily infections with more than 250,000 new cases a day.
France, Switzerland, Italy and the Netherlands are also seeing Covid infections start to rise again, aided and abetted by the relaxation of coronavirus measures and the spread of subvariant BA.2.

A doctor monitors a Covid-19 patient in the Covid-19 intensive care unit of the community hospital in Germany on April 28, 2021.
RONNY HARTMANN | AFP | Getty Images

LONDON — Covid cases are rising in Europe, with an increasing number being attributed to the prevalence of a “stealth” subvariant of the omicron strain.
Covid cases have increased dramatically in the U.K. in recent weeks, while Germany continues to mark record high daily infections with more than 250,000 new cases a day. Elsewhere, France, Switzerland, Italy and the Netherlands are also seeing Covid infections start to rise again, aided and abetted by the relaxation of coronavirus measures and the spread of a new subvariant of omicron, known as BA.2.

Public health officials and scientists are closely monitoring BA.2, which has been described as a “stealth” variant because it has genetic mutations that could make it harder to distinguish from the delta variant using PCR tests, compared with the original omicron variant, BA.1.
The new subvariant would be the latest in a long line to emerge since the pandemic began in China in late 2019. The omicron variant — the most transmissible strain so far — overtook the delta variant, which itself supplanted the alpha variant — and even this was not the original strain of the virus.
Now, Danish scientists believe that the BA.2 subvariant is 1½ times more transmissible than the original omicron strain, and is already overtaking it. The BA.2 variant is now responsible for over half of the new cases in Germany and makes up around 11% of cases in the U.S.
That number is expected to rise further, as it has in Europe.
“It’s clear that BA.2 is more transmissible than BA.1 and this, combined with the relaxation of mitigation measures and waning immunity, is contributing to the current surge in infections,” Lawrence Young, a professor of molecular oncology at Warwick University, told CNBC on Monday.

“The increased infectiousness of BA.2 is already out-competing and replacing BA.1, and we are likely to see similar waves of infection as other variants enter the population.”

As long as the virus continues to spread and replicate, particularly in populations which are under-vaccinated or where vaccine-induced immunity is decaying, “it will throw up new variants and these will remain a continual threat even to those countries with high rates of vaccination,” Young noted. “Living safely with Covid doesn’t mean ignoring the virus and hoping it will go away forever.”

What do we know about BA.2?

The BA.2 variant is being closely monitored by the World Health Organization and similar public health bodies on a national level, including the U.K. Health Security Agency (UKHSA) which has said the subvariant is “under investigation” but is not yet of concern.
Still, the WHO acknowledged in a statement last month that “the proportion of reported sequences designated BA.2 has been increasing relative to BA.1 in recent weeks.”
Initial data show that BA.2 is a little more likely to cause infections in household contacts, when compared with BA.1. It’s not believed currently that the BA.2 variant causes more severe illness or carries an increased the risk of being hospitalised, however further research is needed to confirm this, according to a U.K. parliamentary report published last week.
Hospitalizations have also risen in a number of European countries as Covid infections have risen in recent weeks, but deaths remain far lower than in previous peaks thanks to widespread vaccine coverage.

The UKHSA has done a preliminary analysis comparing vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic disease for BA.1 and BA.2 infections and found that the levels of protection are similar, with efficacy of up to 77% soon after a booster shot, although this wanes over time.

‘Growth advantage’

The WHO has also noted that BA.2 differs from BA.1 in its genetic sequence, including some amino acid differences in the spike protein and other proteins which could give it an advantage over the original omicron.
“Studies are ongoing to understand the reasons for this growth advantage, but initial data suggest that BA.2 appears inherently more transmissible than BA.1, which currently remains the most common omicron sublineage reported. This difference in transmissibility appears to be much smaller than, for example, the difference between BA.1 and Delta,” the WHO said last month.
The WHO added that initial studies suggest that anyone who has been infected with the original omicron variant has strong protection against reinfection with its subvariant BA.2.

Dr Andrew Freedman, reader in infectious disease at Cardiff Medical School, told CNBC he doesn’t think we need to be too concerned about BA.2, despite the fact that it is slightly more contagious.
“I suspect the rising number of cases is related to several factors including BA.2, the relaxation of restrictions and more social mixing, less mask wearing and some waning of immunity from both previous infections and vaccination, especially in those who received boosters early on,” he said.
“There has been an upturn in hospital admissions testing positive for Covid in the U.K., but many of these are incidental and there has not been a parallel increase in deaths.”

Growing in prevalence

The U.K., and the rest of Europe, have acted as a bellweather for the U.S. at several points in the pandemic, declared two years ago by the WHO. particularly when it comes to the rise and spread of new Covid variants which have emerged and subsequently supplanted previous strains of the virus.

This makes the emergence and growing prevalence of the BA.2 variant a point of concern for the U.S. where cases have nosedived recently to reassuring lows.
Already some parts of the U.S. are seeing an increasing number of infections linked to BA.2, particularly in New York, according to data collected by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Elsewhere, China is currently facing its worst Covid-19 outbreak since the height of the pandemic in 2020.
It’s unclear whether BA.2 is contributing to the latest wave of cases, although a prominent infectious disease expert in China told news outlet Caixin that much of the current outbreak is being driven by the BA.2 subvariant.
U.K. data certainly illustrates BA.2’s increasingly prevalence. Sequenced data from Feb. 27 to Mar. 6 found that 68.6% of cases were omicron lineage BA.2, with just 31.1% omicron BA.1.

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