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Seventure Partners, one of Europe’s leaders in financing innovation and a world-leader in Life science microbiome investment, today announces that it has launched AVF, the innovative venture capital fund, targeted at supporting companies in the field of animal health, feed and nutrition. The first close of AVF at €24m, is corner stoned by Adisseo, an industry leader in the animal feed sector.
The livestock sector is undergoing profound changes requiring the entire food chain to adapt accordingly and respond to strong global pressures and changing consumer expectations. The rapidly growing world population and the increased demand from emerging countries for animal protein present significant challenges to the sector, as well as the requirement to meet environmental objectives and for sustainable production within livestock industry.
At a global level, AVF’s investment strategy focuses on two segments at the forefront of the modern agricultural and livestock revolution: animal health, feed and nutrition and digital technologies serving the livestock industry.
Within the animal health sector, food digestibility, its nutritional value and energy potential, and the traceability of the entire animal food chain are major opportunities, as well as addressing the challenges around limiting the environmental footprint of the industry.
In addition to the animal health and nutrition sector, the digital agricultural technology field has seen exponential growth, partly driven by climate change and scarcity in resources and biodiversity, as well as heightened pressure from increasingly demanding consumers. AVF will also finance digital innovations applied to the livestock value chain, such as smart breeding and diagnosis, control and traceability tools.
AVF will primarily invest in innovative companies in Europe, North America and Israel, but will also be open to strong investment proposals from other geographies, including Asia.
Isabelle de Cremoux, CEO and Managing Partner at Seventure Partners, stated: “Since the implementation of our new strategy in 2013, we have launched several institutional funds with defined invest ment themes, connecting prestigious strategic investors with serial entrepreneurs and financial institutional investors. We have launched funds in Digital technologies as well as in Life sciences. After the successful launch of Health for Life Capital™, which raised €160m with strategic partners such as Danone, Novartis, Tereos, Lesaffre and Bel to invest in the microbiome, digital innovation and in human health/nutrition/food, we are now launching AVF, a new fund in animal health and nutrition.”
Commenting on the need for and focus of the fund, Isabelle de Cremoux added: “This new thematic fund was created to address a very specific and expanding need in the market: preserving animal health, gaining a better understanding of the entire food value chain as well as developing technologies to cultivate and produce food in a better way.
We are proud to count Adisseo among the privileged partners who share our vision and we will announce our first investments in the near future.”
Jean-Marc Dublanc, CEO of Adisseo, stated: “Adisseo is a unique company committed to strategic investments in new disruptive technologies, in order to enrich our portfolio of R&D innovations while respecting a mode of sustainable growth. Our ambition is to become one of the leaders in Feed Ingredient Specialties and the experienced partner of choice in animal nutrition. For this reason, we have been investing significantly for many years in our research programs and industrial development projects.
With AVF, our goal is to invest in strategic collaborations combining the agility of start-ups with Adisseo’s expertise. As such, Seventure was a natural partner of choice and we are pleased to become a strategic investor in AVF.”
20th March 2018 – Seventure Partners
