This week sees deep tech investment platform Supernova Invest and the Crédit Agricole Group announce the launch of an innovation capital fund dedicated to agri-agrotech, with a first closing at €60 million, out of a target size of €100 million.
It will be open to third-party investors (industrialists, institutional investors) to support French and European agricultural and agrifood technology champions.
The fund will focus on French and European start-ups bringing the best technological solutions to the agri-agro industry to maintain their competitiveness and speed up their industrial transformation towards greater sustainability.
The agri-agro start-ups targeted will have to meet the five strategic pillars of agri-agro transitions defined by Crédit Agricole:
- Promoting the attractiveness of the farming profession
- Transition to a low-carbon diet
- Preserving natural resources
- Changing eating habits
- Production through the circular economy.
The first fund will invest on a lead/co-lead basis and target a maximum of twenty participations, with initial investments from €2 to €4 million, including the capacity to reinvest in adds-on.
It's part of a broader aim to connect French farmers, cooperatives, and agrifood manufacturers to the continent's best deep tech innovations and finance transformative R&D projects (biocontrol, precision agriculture, green chemistry, robotics, etc.), industrial scale-up and commercial deployment, in highly growth start-ups with the potential to become European and global leaders.
Pierre-Emmanuel Struyven, Chairman of Supernova Invest, comments:
"Supernova Invest is expanding its development momentum and investment capacity with this agri-agro tech thematic fund, a deep sector that we know, with strong potential.
The dealflow is highly qualified in Europe and even more so in France, with a pool of start-ups that have already achieved various technological and industrial milestones, giving them strong positions worldwide.
We invite interested investors to join us in the great agri-agro tech revolution underway."
According to Jean-Pierre Touzet, Head of Agri-Agro - Guarantee - Capital Development at Crédit Agricole S.A.:
"The aim is to position the Crédit Agricole Group as a trailblazer and shaper of the future in agricultural and agrifood transitions.
Our subscription to this fund is fully in line with our Corporate Project and the "Ambition Agri Agro" range of financing and investment instruments we are building."
Supernova Invest launched its Supernova Innovation 3 seed fund in June this year. With a first closing of €75 million, it focuses on European deep-tech start-ups protected by IP and positioned in high-potential growth markets.
Lead image: Erwan Hesry
Would you like to write the first comment?
Login to post comments