8F reaches $61m first close on SE Asia aquaculture fund

The target is $120 million. 8F had originally planned to launch the Southeast Asia fund within a few months of closing its debut fund at $358.8 million in March last year. At that time, the plan was to raise $90 million.

LPs include two Southeast Asian and two Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds, as well as family offices and other institutional investors. 8F said “several” global investors in the fund have plans to join a subsequent closing. It also listed fish feed maker Nutreco and food processing company Louis Dreyfus as investors without specifying whether they committed to either fund.

“The success of the Southeast Asia fund is driven by an increased need for innovative solutions to improve the sustainability of our food systems and to address the rapidly-growing,” Stephane Farouze, chairman and co-founder of 8F, said in a statement. Farouze is also a board member of Pure Salmon, the Abu Dhabi-based salmon farming business 8F is developing.

The plan for Fund II is to establish and operate a 10,000-tons-per-annum recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) facility in Brunei for distribution regionally. RAS technology is said to drive significantly reduced costs versus traditional sea-cage farming, while ensuring products can be marketed as free of antibiotics, hormones, pesticides, and micro-plastics.

Pure Salmon will distribute a mix of branded fresh and smoked salmon products, targeting traditional retailers, and e-commerce platforms, as well as tourism-driven hotels, restaurants and catering sectors across Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. To reduce waste, processing byproducts will be transformed into branded pet food. This will leverage a partnership with the Brunei government.

In addition to Southeast Asia, operations currently span the Middle East, Japan, China, the US, and Europe, with the target for global production set at 260,000 tons a year. Recent expansions include the acquisition last month of Kruger Kaldnes, a United Arab Emirates-based RAS business in partnership with the Abu Dhabi Investment Office. The company has been renamed Pure Salmon Kaldnes.

Pure Salmon says that, unlike traditional Salmon producers, it has almost zero negative impact on ocean ecosystems, requiring minimal waste, land usage, and resource consumption. Its fish are touted free of antibiotics and vaccines and less impacted by micro-plastics. Meanwhile, a local production model is said to reduce the transport and carbon footprint.

8F also has plans to launch separate funds targeting the Middle East and China; a China fund targeting $650-700 million was planned as early as March 2020. The private equity firm has also recently announced the hire of Peter Liu – formerly KKR’s CFO for Europe and Asia – as CFO and COO.

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• Topics
• Southeast Asia
• Fundraising
• Buyout
• Growth
• Industrials
• Consumer
• Singapore
• Brunei
• Agriculture