Global AgInvesting | 13 November 2023
By Lynda Kiernan-Stone
Agriculture & Natural Solutions Acquisition – a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) backed by Riverstone Investment Group and Impact Ag Partners – has listed on the NASDAQ at a valuation of $300 million after offering 30 million units at a $10 per unit price point. Trading began on November 9, 2023 under the ticker symbol ANSCU.
The SPAC is being headed by CEO and Director Bert Glover, who is the founder and managing director of Impact Ag, and its Chairman David Leuschen, the co-founder and senior managing director of private equity firm Riverstone Investment Group – and is one of the top three SPACs when examined by deal size this year.
The company stated that it intends to focus its search for a target with a key objective of developing and advancing a platform that decarbonizes the traditional agriculture sector and aims to drive natural capital at scale.
This announcement reflects a growing recognition of the environmental and economic benefits that can be derived from sustainable land management and the preservation of our planet’s natural resources. As climate change, biodiversity loss, and resource scarcity become increasingly urgent global challenges, investors are seeking opportunities that not only align with their financial goals, but also move the needle toward a more sustainable and resilient future.
Together, Riverstone and Impact Ag have become leaders in advancing low-carbon and natural capital in their own rights.
The launch of this SPAC is representative of an expansion of Riverstone’s 17 years of experience in low-carbon investing, and adds to the firm’s efforts – and the support from its long-term investors across its low-carbon platforms.
With AUM exceeding A$955 million across Australia and the U.S., Impact Ag Partners is a leading specialist agricultural asset management firm that takes a long-term sustainable approach to agriculture through regenerative production – an approach that the firm stated has demonstrated the relationship between soil, animals, plants, and human health.
As recently as late September of this year, Impact Ag Partners joined SLM Partners to launch the SLM Agri Carbon Fund – a new investment vehicle to back regenerative agriculture and carbon storage in Australia.
Taken separately, both firms, which have been actively investing for nearly the same amount of time (SLM being founded in 2009 and Impact Ag Partners founded in 2010), have each had successful track records of monetizing their respective investment mandates.
Over the past decade, SLM Partners has acquired more than 1 million acres of grazing land, and has generated and sold 1.7 million tons of carbon credits. While Impact Ag Partners has realized A$1 million in soil carbon credit revenue, and has posted total client returns of seven-to-14 percent.
The fund will identify and acquire mixed farms in certain regions of eastern Australia on which will be implemented regenerative practices such as large-scale rotational grazing, reduced tillage, cover cropping, the integration of livestock with grain rotations, afforestation, and environmental plantings of native vegetation. It also will work to establish carbon projects on these assets under government-approved modeled and measured methodologies to quantify the impacts of these measures.
