Three companies building alternative-ingredient plants in the United States have financed part of the build with a loan guaranteed by the US Department of Agriculture’s Business & Industry programme. Liberation Labs closed one through Ameris Bank in November 2023 for its precision fermentation plant in Richmond, Indiana. Voyage Foods used one for its cocoa-free chocolate and coffee plant in Mason, Ohio, announced in October 2024. Plantible Foods closed one through X-Caliber Rural Capital on 4 August 2026 for its water-lentil protein site in Eldorado, Texas.
Every one of them was for $25 million. That is not a coincidence of project size. It is the programme’s ceiling. Under 7 CFR 5001.406(c), the maximum total B&I guaranteed lending to a single borrower is $25 million, and X-Caliber’s release says so directly: “the maximum available amount under the program”.
That makes the instrument worth understanding on its own terms, because it is the only piece of these capital stacks whose rules are published. The equity rounds around them are disclosed as headline figures. The guarantee is disclosed in the Code of Federal Regulations and an annual Federal Register notice, down to the fee rate.
What USDA actually guarantees
Start with what the B&I guarantee is not. It is not a USDA loan. The lender — Ameris Bank, X-Caliber, or in Voyage’s case a lender that has not been named — makes the loan on its own balance sheet and USDA guarantees a share of the lender’s loss if the borrower defaults. The borrower owes the whole amount to the lender regardless.
The share is set each fiscal year. The three notices that cover these loans agree on the number.
| Fiscal year (obligations from 1 October) | B&I guarantee percentage | One-time guarantee fee | Annual retention fee | Extra fee if guarantee issued before construction completes | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FY2024 | 80% | 3.00% | 0.55% | 0.50% | 88 FR 42909 |
| FY2025 | 80% | 3.00% | 0.55% | 0.50% | 89 FR 53041 |
| FY2026 | 80% for loans of $5m to $25m (85% under $5m) | 3.0% | 0.55% | 0.50% | 91 FR 11272 |
The fee mechanics are in § 5001.454 and § 5001.455 and in the notices. The one-time fee is the loan amount multiplied by the guarantee percentage multiplied by the fee rate. The retention fee is the outstanding principal on 31 December multiplied by the guarantee percentage multiplied by the retention rate, paid annually by the lender for as long as the guarantee is outstanding. The lender may pass both to the borrower.
For a $25 million loan at 80%, the arithmetic is ours, not USDA’s, but it follows directly from the published rates:
| Item | Calculation | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Guaranteed portion (USDA’s maximum exposure) | $25m × 80% | $20.0m |
| Unguaranteed portion carried by the lender and any participants | $25m × 20% | $5.0m |
| Minimum the originating lender must hold (§ 5001.408(a)(3)) | $25m × 7.5% | $1.875m |
| One-time guarantee fee | $25m × 80% × 3.0% | $600,000 |
| Additional fee if the guarantee is issued before the plant is finished | $25m × 80% × 0.50% | $100,000 |
| Annual retention fee at full outstanding balance | $25m × 80% × 0.55% | $110,000 a year |
Two further rules matter for a plant that is not yet producing. Under § 5001.402, the first full principal-and-interest payment must begin no more than three years from the date of the note, interest must be paid at least annually from year one, and balloon maturities are not allowed. The maximum term is the useful life of the collateral, capped at 40 years. The lender may sell the guaranteed portion into the secondary market (§ 5001.408), which is how a regional bank can carry a $25 million exposure to a first-of-a-kind fermentation plant: after assignment its own retained risk is the unguaranteed slice.
Practical consequence: when a company announces a “$25 million USDA loan”, read it as a $25 million bank loan, of which the federal government stands behind $20 million, on which the company will pay roughly $600,000 up front and about $110,000 a year in guarantee fees on top of interest, and on which principal repayment starts within three years whether or not the plant has reached nameplate.
Three borrowers, one number
The three deals are otherwise quite different, which is what makes the shared number informative.
| Borrower | Closed / announced | Lender | Plant | Stated project scale | Where $25m sits in the stack |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Liberation Labs | 30 Nov 2023 | Ameris Bank (Georgia-chartered; $25.7bn assets at Sept 2023) | Precision fermentation, 600,000 L, dedicated downstream, Richmond IN | $115m capital cost (2023 reporting); commercial production “expected to commence by the end of next year” at the time, i.e. end-2024 | About 22% of the stated plant cost |
| Voyage Foods | Announced Oct 2024 | Not named in the coverage we have | Cocoa-free chocolate, bean-free coffee, nut-free spreads; 284,000 sq ft, Mason OH | 10,000 t/yr cocoa-free chocolate “once fully established”; “fully operational since Q4 2025” (founder, Sept 2026) | Company has raised $94m to date; plant cost not disclosed |
| Plantible Foods | 4 Aug 2026 | X-Caliber Rural Capital (licensed USDA OneRD lender) | Up to 50 new greenhouses at the Ranchito site, Eldorado TX | Capacity to rise “five-fold to over 1,000 metric tons” a year; construction finished “early 2027” (CEO) | $25m of a $35m package; the other $10m is equity from RA Capital and existing investors |
For Liberation Labs the guarantee is a minority of the build. Our earlier analysis found the plant’s schedule had been restated four times since the 2023 target of end-2024; whatever the interest-only period on the Ameris loan, the § 5001.402 clock on first principal repayment runs from the note date, not from first production. We do not know the note date or whether Liberation negotiated the full three years.
For Plantible the guarantee is the majority of the package, and the structure is closer to what the programme describes on its face: an operating plant, modular expansion, and a CEO who told AgFunderNews the company can go “from greenfield to cash flow generating asset within nine months”. The X-Caliber release says nothing about the guarantee percentage applied, but a loan obligated in FY2026 in the $5m to $25m band falls under the 80% row of the March 2026 notice.
Voyage sits between. The plant is built and running, but the company has not disclosed its cost, and the founder declined to discuss runway or fundraising when asked this month.
Practical consequence: the cap means the guarantee scales the wrong way for the projects that most need it. It covers a larger share of a $35 million greenhouse expansion than of a $115 million greenfield fermentation plant, and for anything approaching the size of the plants discussed in our fermentation capacity map, $25 million is a rounding error. The regulation permits the Secretary to approve up to $40 million, but only for rural cooperatives processing value-added agricultural commodities, which none of these borrowers is.
What the eligibility test does to site selection
The Liberation Labs release describes B&I loans as available to “businesses located in areas with a population of 50,000 or fewer residents”. The fee notices add a second layer: a reduced 1.0% guarantee fee is available for projects in distressed or persistent-poverty rural communities and a handful of other categories, capped in FY2025 at 12% of the year’s B&I authority.
The three sites are Richmond, Indiana; Eldorado, Texas (Schleicher County); and Mason, Ohio. We have not run them against USDA’s eligibility map; the fact that each loan was approved is the only evidence of eligibility we have, and it is sufficient. None of the three companies has said publicly that the rural eligibility test drove its choice of site, and we are not going to assert that it did. But an investor reading a site announcement from a company that later turns up with a B&I loan should note that the two decisions are linked in one direction: the loan is only available if the site qualifies.
Practical consequence: if a company’s plan includes a B&I guarantee, the site has to pass the population test before the application is filed. A plant in a metropolitan county is not eligible, whatever its merits.
The counter-argument: cheap, patient and non-dilutive
None of the above is an argument against taking the money. For an early-stage manufacturer, a guaranteed loan is likely to be cheaper than the alternatives, because the lender prices $20 million of the exposure against the federal government rather than against a company with no operating history. The term can run to the useful life of the asset. Balloon payments are prohibited, which removes a refinancing cliff that private credit would normally impose. The fee schedule is published and fixed at obligation. And unlike the equity that makes up the rest of these stacks, it does not reprice the company.
X-Caliber’s release puts the case for the programme plainly: for growing companies it “can provide access to larger loan proceeds and longer-term financing that may otherwise not be available through conventional lending”. Liberation Labs’ CEO said the award followed “significant due diligence and risk rating”, which is itself a signal that outside underwriters have looked at the plan.
The limits are structural rather than a flaw in the deals. The programme was designed for rural job creation, not for scaling a new industrial process, and the $25 million cap and population test follow from that purpose. What the three loans show is that alt-protein manufacturers have found the instrument, taken all of it, and still had to raise the balance elsewhere.
What we could not establish
- Voyage Foods’ lender. The 2024 coverage and the September 2026 interview describe “a $25 million loan guaranteed by the US Department of Agriculture” without naming the bank. We could not locate a USDA or lender announcement for it.
- The fiscal year in which each loan was obligated, and therefore which notice’s rates apply. We have shown the rates for the years in which each was announced; a loan obligated earlier than announced would carry the earlier year’s rates. The 80% B&I percentage is the same across all three years, so the guaranteed share does not change; the fee rates shown are the same in each notice we read.
- Whether any of the three used the reduced-fee category, which would cut the one-time fee from 3.0% to 1.0%.
- The note dates and interest-only periods, which determine when principal repayment began or begins.
- Whether Liberation Labs’ $115 million plant cost still stands. It dates from 2023 reporting.
- Whether Ameris Bank’s $25 million term loan to Believer Meats carried a USDA guarantee. Ameris is the lender in the Liberation Labs deal and has a Government Guaranteed Lending division; its Believer loan, disclosed in the receivership filings we analysed in our August piece on the plant sale, is also exactly $25 million and the plant is in Wilson County, North Carolina. None of the filings or coverage we have read describes it as guaranteed, and we are not asserting that it was. If it were, USDA would be exposed to a loss on the guaranteed portion after collateral recovery — a question worth asking, and one we could not answer.
- Any other alt-protein B&I borrower. We searched for others and found these three. There may be guarantees that were never announced.
What to watch
- Plantible’s next expansion. The CEO said this will not be the last capital raised. With the borrower cap already used, the next tranche cannot come from B&I, so the instrument chosen will show what the guaranteed loan was a bridge to.
- Liberation Labs’ first principal payment. The § 5001.402 three-year limit implies principal is due, at the latest, three years from the note date. If the note was signed around the November 2023 announcement, that is late 2026, against a plant with no announced production start.
- The FY2027 OneRD notice, due before 1 October 2026. A change to the 80% percentage, the 3.0% fee or the $5 million tier introduced in FY2026 would alter the arithmetic above for any 2027 borrower.
- Any receivership or default involving a B&I-guaranteed alt-protein loan. The programme’s loss-claim rules (§ 5001.450 and following) pay the lender on the guaranteed portion after liquidation. A first such claim in this sector would be a public data point on recovery values for fermentation and processing assets.