Field Notes: Morrison & Co’s carbon play; Blue Earth closes $108m impact credit fund; Nest seeks timberland GP
Agri Investor
Global coverage of the deals, firms and people driving agri-business today
Morrison & Co’s carbon play; Blue Earth closes $108 million impact credit fund;?Nest seeks a timberland GP. Plus: Inari is sued by Corteva; Leading Harvest expands into Canada; and more. Welcome to Field Notes, the start-of-the-week briefing from Agri Investor .
Tips and feedback to Binyamin Ali or email [email protected] ??
First Look
Morrison & Co’s carbon play
Another week, another infrastructure fund manager investing in natural assets.
After Ardian launched Averrhoa Nature-Based Solutions last week, news reached us that Morrison & Co is also investing in natural assets – albeit via one of its existing vehicles, the closed-end Growth Infrastructure Fund, rather than setting up a new platform.
We spoke to Morrison & Co’s head of asset management Steven Fitzgerald...find out what he shared ...
Read the full article here .?
They said it
“We’ve had around 20 percent per year increases in land values over the last three years but farm profitability hasn’t kept up with that. That means farmers can’t afford to pay 4.5 percent rent”?
Growth Farms senior portfolio manager David Sackett tells Agri Investor why the firm is winding up its Agricultural Lease Fund four years early and banking its gains.?
Fundraising?
Blue Earth closes $108.5m impact credit fund
Blue Earth Capital AG , the impact firm established by the founders of Partners Group, has closed its second impact credit fund on $108.5 million.?
Read the full story here .
LP watch
Nest seeks timberland GP
British public pension scheme Nest pensions has formally started searching for a fund manager through which it can make investments in timberland.
?The defined contribution pension scheme started its natural capital market warming exercise in February.
Nest investment policy analyst Jessica Menelon , who led the market warming exercise, said at the time that an allocation had not yet been set for the asset class, but that the pension has set a 5 percent allocation for its other private market assets, having only invested in public equities until 2019. ?
“For us to make it worthwhile, I’m not sure we’ll look at anything that’s less than 2 percent allocation,” Menelon told Agri Investor .
Farmland?
ANREV : Index records lowest return since inception for Q2 2023 ?
领英推荐
Investment returns from Australian farmland fell to their lowest level in more than eight years in June 2023, according to the latest edition of the Australia Farmland Index for Q2 2023.
Australian farmland returned 2.01 percent on a 12-month annualized basis, comprising an income return of -1.22 percent and capital growth of 3.21 percent.
This is the lowest 12-month annualized rolling return figure for any quarter since the inception of the Australian Farmland Index in 2015, which is compiled by the Asian Association for Investors in Non-Listed Real Estate Vehicles (ANREV).
Read the full story here .
Lawsuit
Flagship Pioneering’s Inari Agriculture served lawsuit
Listed agricultural inputs and seeds business Corteva filed a lawsuit against Inari Agriculture, a portfolio company of PE firm Flagship Pioneering.
The lawsuit “seeks to prevent Inari from continuing its brazen efforts to steal Corteva's groundbreaking work,” said a statement from Corteva .
Sustainability
Leading Harvest expands north
Manulife Investment Management , Bonnefield ?and McCain Foods are collaborating with Farm Credit Canada (FCC) on an effort to extend the non-profit sustainability standard Leading Harvest into Canada.
Leading Harvest president and chief executive Kenny Fahey told Agri Investor the group has not yet committed to using the sustainability standard and will follow the example of a previous expansion into Australia by taking steps to ensure the program can be appropriately applied in a Canadian context.
“The things we ended up having to change when we went to Australia was more about references, to make sure the standard was readable both by the user of the program and auditor of the program, in that context,” he said.
VC fundraising?
SWAP Food , has completed a €32.5 million funding round led by Fonds SPI - Sociétés de Projets Industriels fund and AgriO French Tech Seed , with participation from Astanor , redalpine , Newfund and VERSO CAPITAL .
Eden Park , an Australian precision fermentation start-up co-owned by Norco, closed a $24.4 million Series A funding round led by Main Sequence Ventures, with participation from Breakthrough Victoria , RADAR VENTURES , Possible Ventures , Mars’ Digitalis Ventures, NGS Super and Orkla ASA .
Pow.Bio , a US-based precision fermentation start-up, raised a $9.5 million Series A round led by Re:Food and Thia Ventures , with participation from Hitachi Ventures , Bee Partners , Possible Ventures , X factor, iSelect, Climate Capital , Vectors, Better Ventures and Cantos .
Bonsai Robotics , raised a $13.5 million seed funding round led by Acre Venture Partners , with participation from E14, Congruent, Serra Ventures, LLC , Fall Line Capital , SNR Ventures, ANDROS and numerous angel investors.
Rantizo , an Iowa-based operator of spray drone services for agriculture, raised $6 million in a Series A funding round led by Leaps by Bayer , with participation from Fulcrum Global Capital and Innova Memphis .?
Also in the news...
#agribusiness #timberland #naturalcapital #infrastructure #agtech