Private Market Insights IV/2023
Meet the Managers: Impact Investing with Alastair Cooper from Cibus Capital
Cibus Capital LLP, a London-based investment adviser in Golding’s Impact portfolio, brings finance and farming together to drive a sustainable future for food. One of its strategies is to invest in late-stage food & agri-tech companies in Europe and North America, with the intention to positively impact resource efficiency, biodiversity, GHG emissions, human health and animal welfare. Founded in 2016, the company has more than EUR 1.0 billion in AuM. Together with the company’s partner, Alastair Cooper, we talked about their strategy and goals.
What drives demand for the products in your sector?
Alastair Cooper: Megatrends such as climate change, agri-culture’s heavy reliance on fossil fuels and labour shortages are forcing alterations in food production.
Geopolitical conflicts, cost of inputs and fragility of supply chains are contributing to mounting food security issues. No plan to address these imbalances will be complete without incorporating disruptive technology.
The imperative for agrifood technologies is here and now.
What does it take to make successful investments in your sector?
Alastair Cooper: First it takes a deep understanding of farming and agriculture: its processes, its growth prospects, its pain points. Cibus is comprised of team members who have both direct farming and finance experience, which affords us insights into the problems agrifood tech innovations are seeking to address and the potential barriers for adoption.
Agrifood tech is one of the fastest growing areas within venture today and for that reason, there has been an explosion of new opportunities coming to market. Finding, filtering and assessing those opportunities requires rigorous processes, all while maintaining strict discipline on valuations.
Lastly, we would highlight the need for a structured approach to risk by correctly pinpointing the risks inherent in a single opportunity and suitably mitigating them. One such mitigant is to diversify the portfolio holdings by geography and sector to balance market risks and alleviate episodic or unexpected outcomes. All of these require a finely tuned risk barometer, which the team has amply demonstrated.
What keeps you up at night?
Alastair Cooper: We see up to thirty new companies a week! The scope of impact for these technologies excites us and quite often makes my brain spin late into the evening with the possibilities each affords.
On darker days, the ‘what if’ scenario of not addressing the need to fix our broken food system is calamitous and can easily prompt a sleepless night!
What was your latest investment and how does it make our world more sustainable?
Alastair Cooper: Our most recent investment was into Switzerland-based Ecorobotix. Ecorobotix has developed an unparalleled precision-spraying system that uses computer vision in combination with robotic hardware to deliver treatments at a plant-by-plant level, reducing herbicide use by up to 95%. That means healthier food for human consumption, healthier soils for the planet, less detriment to local nature, a dramatic reduction in GHGs from food production and all with a commercial upside to the farmer. It is impossible not to be excited by an investment with that scale of impact.
