Proterra buys Australia agriculture assets

Financial details have not been disclosed. The assets were part of a cropping portfolio near the village of North Star owned by the Sustainable Agriculture Fund (SAF), an agriculture-focused investment vehicle set up in 2009 with the backing of seven foundation investors, five of them Australian superannuation funds.

One Tree has purchased several farmland assets in Queensland and New South Wales for Proterra since 2014, when the firm was the PE unit of Black River Asset Management, the alternative investment arm of agribusiness giant Cargill. Proterra's management team spun out from Black River in 2015 to invest in agriculture and natural resources independently, with Cargill retaining a significant LP stake.

Proterra's portfolio in Asia includes FKS Food & Agri, the food and agriculture platform of Southeast Asia's FKS Group, to which the firm committed $100 million last year. In the past year the firm has also exited dairy farm operators AustAsia and Dodla Dairy, based in China and India respectively. Both exits saw Proterra return over twice its original investment.

AgCap, which manages SAF, has been divesting the fund's assets piecemeal after failing to find a buyer for the entire portfolio. Last year the firm said it planned to move away from livestock and cropland investments to focus on dairy assets. The remaining two assets from the North Star portfolio were purchased by Westchester Agricultural Asset Management, a vehicle managed by TIAA-CREF.

• Tweet  
• Facebook  
• LinkedIn  
• Google plus  
• Save this article  
• Send to  

• Topics
• Australasia
• Consumer
• Buyouts
• Australia
• Proterra Investment Partners
• Agriculture