The round included most of Vancouver, British Columbia-based CellFor's prior investors including ATP Capital and CSFB Private Equity, both of New York, and GrowthWorks Capital and BDC Venture Capital, both of Vancouver. The round also included a handful of unnamed late stage financial investors. Strategic investor E.I. duPont de Nemours and Co. of Wilmington, Del., did not participate in the current round but invested additional money in the company earlier this year.

The new round brings total investment in the eight-year-old startup to about $100 million and will primarily go to expanding growing facilities to meet demand for genetically selected loblolly pine seedlings for timber cultivation. The company will deliver nearly 40 million seedlings to timber growers across the Southeast this year, with additional markets germinating in South America and New Zealand.

CellFor CEO Tom Urban said that while the company is tightly focused on executing high-volume production to meet demands of customers that have committed to planting the company's seedlings, he said the new investment marks a maturation that will allow the company to explore new markets and applications of is technology.

"In terms of the basic focus, for the last two years we have really been working on developing production systems for customers growing structural lumber," Urban said. "But the trees we produce are cheap, abundant and uniform, and while we are not at a appoint where we are going to do a pilot project or anything, they could be a source of feedstock for biofuels."

The CellFor announcement stands out among recent plant biotechnology deals in downplaying the importance of biofuels, as recent investments in row crop seed developers including Mendel Biotechnology Inc. of Hayward, Calif., Targeted Growth Inc. of Seattle and Ceres Inc. of Thousand Oaks, Calif., have emphasized a shift in focus to research in cellulosic plants for potential biofuel development. Brenda Irwin, a director with BDC Venture Capital, said the new investment reflects CellFor's success in establishing leadership in providing genetically selected seed stock to the timber industry, and that the company is now in a position to pursue other applications it has so far kept on a back burner.

"They have made fantastic progress in securing top landholders making high-volume commitments, and quite frankly from a board level we have encouraged them to be focused on execution," Irwin said. "Now they are in a better position to pursue additional strategies in carbon sequestration and biofuels and the transfer of technology in other ag areas."

CellFor does not use transgenic modification technology but has developed a strain of high-yield loblolly pine through selective breeding that Urban said produces 50% to 90% greater value than traditional seedlings. The company sells its products to timber companies and financial investors in timberland for planting new forests that will produce sawmill lumber in 20 to 25 years.

Jonathan Malkin, managing general partner of ATP Capital and CellFor's chairman, said the company will continue to develop additional technology for improving quality, yields and disease resistance in pine and other coniferous tree species. He said the current round came at an increase in valuation to the company's previous round and that fundraising focused on investors who could help the company go to public markets for its next financing.

"We went to potential new lead investors to see what the interest was, but there was enough demand from existing investors," Malkin said. "But we did have a lot of interest from people that don't normally invest in private deals, and we brought some of them in as mezzanine investors."

Urban would not disclose current revenues, but he said the company expects to reach profitability within 24 months.

CellFor used no outside financial adviser for the round. It had legal work on the deal from David Allard of Lawson Lundell LLP in Vancouver.