Recent Investments in the Agricultural Sector
- 29 July 2021
- 1 min read
This article was originally published in May 2021, but has been updated since.
African Port Logistics and Infrastructure (APLI) is a cold storage and logistics business in the food and agro-processing sector. We invested in the business, to fund its ground-breaking new development, the Coega Fruit Terminal (CFT), located in the Coega Special Economic Zone in the Eastern Cape. CFT is the world’s first fully integrated export fruit campus - combining fruit packing, cold-storage and container depot activities in a single development.
State-of-the-art fruit packing facility: This 16 000 m2 facility (managed by APLI’s sister company) will pack fruit for both export and local fruit customers, using the latest in automated fruit packing equipment. Without the need for additional road transport and handling, palletised export product is placed under cooling in the shortest possible time, ensuring the country’s highest standards in export fruit quality.
High-tech cold storage: In addition to being South Africa’s first fully automated fruit storage facility, this is also one of the largest. The automated facility boasts airlock entries and exits, which are not only energy efficient, but also allow for strict temperature management, ensuring the best care for the fruit handled at the facility.
Refrigerated trailer (reefer) depot: The 3 300 twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU), multi-user container depot, will provide reefer inspection, repair and specialised preparation services, ensuring adequate availability of appropriate empty reefer equipment for fruit received and stored at the cold storage facility.
Capital Harvest is an agricultural lending business providing production, working capital and term debt facilities to farmers, predominantly in the Western Cape. The company previously originated loans on behalf of Land Bank, but, given the known issues at Land Bank, it urgently needed to find an alternative funding source.
Read: A Brief Overview and Outlook of the Agriculture Sector.
We worked closely with Capital Harvest to structure a securitisation vehicle in which we invested, so that it could take over a portion of its loan book from Land Bank. This enabled the company to continue to support its agricultural clients.
Operating since 1994, Harvest Fresh is a leading grower, packer, processor and distributor of safe, quality and value-added fresh produce. It supplies pre-packaged fresh salads and vegetables to the major retailers (Freshmark, Pick n Pay, Spar and Woolworths) and distributes Harvest Fresh-branded products to 150 stores across the country.
Our investment will fund the purchase of an additional farm and the construction of a new packhouse, allowing the company to meet the growing demand from the retailers they supply.
