Coppelian Capital Ventures invests in major agribusiness venture
Australia’s Northern Territory is a vast landmass.
The NT’s tropical northern third offers high quality soils, consistent and high rainfall, dependable wet and dry seasons, plentiful aquifers, deep rivers, and zero-fee water rights.
There are three global geo-zones with rainfall and soil types will allow agribusiness development at an industrial scale: Kenya, Brazil, and Australia’s Northern Territory. Australia offers economic and political stability, excellent export/trade agreements, a strong and stable currency, audited ESG credentials, robust regulation, and excellent infrastructure.
Since the NT’s Government began to cross the rubicon; moving away from a 150 year old pastoral land-use philosophy toward its published and current investment-focussed approach for land development, the NT has become one of the world’s fastest growth regions for agricultural development, particularly for food and textiles.
Coppelian Capital were approached by an investment group and landholders to create a turn-key agribusiness vehicle able to maximise returns to institutional investor funds whilst minimising investment risk via an asset guarantee strategy and minimal reliance on external contracting and engineering inputs.
The Coppelian team focussed on following a simple, cohesive strategy: apply ecologically responsible modern precision agriculture and cost-effective land development and management methodologies to rich underdeveloped land at a scale that only the Northern Territory can offer.
Coppelian Capital’s in-house agribusiness group have researched, tested and studied technologies and eco-regenerative practices that successfully scale to the project’s environmental and land-mass requirements. The programme intends to expand to a land-mass exceeding 900 km2, with agricultural utilisation of 11,500 hectares.
Our venture integrates proven efficiency-based technologies, precision agriculture platforms, and an in-house developed crop monitoring AI platform - releasing higher yields with reduced agricultural inputs and overhead costs, and operating sustainable ESG ‘reduce and reuse’ environmental, infrastructure, and process controls.
By developing and controlling our own supply chain for each carefully selected primary harvest output, and delivery of a multi-phase defined land engineering programme combined with an audited carbon sequestration and credit programme, the investment vehicle is structured to deliver strong EBITDA returns and above-market asset development value returns.
Our overall proposition can be summarised as an assetco engaged with straightforward hard-asset engineering development, and an opco engaged with increasing the value of a portfolio of supply-chain product brands matched with strong market demand.
Coppelian have a reputation for evaluating, building, and coaching strong leadership teams able to act with single-minded purpose, exhibiting a cohesive behavioural dynamic. In this instance we attracted and recruited an extraordinary senior management team each demonstrating outstanding track-records.
Coppelian’s proposition have been compiled into a tightly-defined execution plan, process controls, SMT accountability matrix, technology and monitoring platforms, and bespoke modelling. The compelling agribusiness 10-year investment-expansion proposition exceeded every parameter of the initial brief. Coppelian currently owns 100% of the programme’s IP.
Coppelian are preparing to lead a deal process and management roadshow to select an optimal private equity partner intended to hold overall programme and IP ownership. This process, commencing in May 2023, will be run out of the London Office.