Last week in brief...Large scale infrastructure financing projects made up most of the news in what was otherwise a slower week than usual. We'll start with transactions involving nine renewable energy assets in South Africa, prompted by Round 4 of the government's REIPPPP Program.
African Infrastructure Investment Managers or AIIM has taken stakes in nine new solar and wind power plants in South Africa. The equity deal is being transacted on behalf of AIIM’s IDEAS Managed Fund, which will now own a controlling stake in each of the projects.
When fully operational, the assets will provide an additional 800MW of renewable energy capacity to South Africa’s national power grid and help consolidate AIIM’s position as the leading equity investor under the program. In 2017, AIIM-backed assets generated 25% of the clean energy supplied to the country’s national grid.
The Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund is participating in the debt financing required by Nigeria's Indorama Eleme Fertilizer & Chemicals (IEFCL) to expand the company's existing fertilizer plant in Port Harcourt.
The Investec Asset Management-managed investment vehicle is providing a loan to IEFCL as part of an overall $1.1 billion expansion plan, which will see a new plant built alongside the company's existing facility, and double the company's annual output to 2.8 million metric tonnes. The balance of the financing is being provided by various institutions led by the IFC. This loan is a repeat investment in IEFCL for EAIF, which had previously provided loans of $48.8 million towards the construction of the first fertilizer plant.
The only private equity deal of the week came courtesy of Agile Capital. The Johannesburg-based private equity investor is taking a stake in SA Biomedical, a South African medical device business. The medical devices market in South Africa is one of the largest on the continent and is projected to expand by 8.6% annually over the next five years.
This anticipated growth is underpinned by an increasing need for healthcare as well as the introduction of South Africa's planned National Health Insurance Scheme. These factors, combined with the strength and experience of the firm's management and staff, were key criteria in the decision to make "a sizeable transaction" on behalf of the Agile's third fund.
In fundraising news, Finance in Motion announced the first close for the Arbaro Fund, a new sustainable forestry impact fund. The Frankfurt-headquartered asset manager has teamed up with Unique, a timber sector advisory company, to establish the fund, which held a first close of $60.2 million last month.
The European Investment Bank anchored the close, and was joined by FinnFund, Austrian fair-practice pension fund Vorsorgekasse, sustainable investor GLS Treuhand and Girteka Logistics, a European transport company. Ultimately the fund is looking to raise $200 million which will be used to build a portfolio of some twelve sustainable forestry projects in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America.
Ketso Gordhan, whose career spans several high-profile private capital-related African investment roles, has been appointed as the new Chief Executive Officer for the SA SME Fund. With a wealth of senior private equity and impact investment experience as well as national and local government service, he is well-versed in public private investment initiatives. His primary focus will be on achieving the fund's broad objective of creating and growing black entrepreneurs in South Africa.
Mergence Investment Management is now opening a permanent office in Lesotho's capital city, Maseru. The move will help Mergence, which has been backing opportunities in the southern African kingdom since 2015, get closer to opportunities in the market and source higher-quality deal flow for its funds. The company has already made two local hires, including an analyst for unlisted investments.
That's it for this week. As always, you can review these and other stories by clicking through to this week's preview edition of the newsletter.
Allan Cunningham is a senior media executive who has spent the last 15 years of his career working for some of the world’s most respected M&A and Private Equity media companies including Dow Jones’s publications Private Equity Analyst and VentureWire and most recently, The Deal. He has built a number of successful digital and event content businesses, both subscription and sponsor-supported, delivering information and content-marketing services to clients in the M&A and broader deal ecosystem. He recently struck out on his own and launched Rowayton Press, a multi-platform media company focused on the private capital opportunities in emerging and frontier markets. Mr. Cunningham holds a Bachelors degree from Liverpool John Moores University in the UK.
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A lo largo de la inversión de MC III, TGCC no solo ha logrado éxitos...
