Partners with Cordiant Group
Targets agricultural investments
Aligns with Vision 2030 goals
A Riyadh private equity firm established by a Saudi royal is joining forces with Canadian asset manager Cordiant Group to set up a $5 billion fund for agricultural investments across the GCC.
The company is aiming to ultimately invest $10 billion by 2035 “on the back of successful fundraising” and become one of the “top ten fresh food businesses globally”, said Prince Saud bin Abdulaziz bin Abdullah Al Saud, chairman of Saudi conglomerate Aram Palms Company.
He agreed a partnership with Cordiant this week to launch the new entity, which will be known as Cordiant Aram Palms Middle East Private Equity Company once the deal is finalised.
The company will serve as Cordiant’s GCC headquarters.
It will lead investments initially in permanent crop (year-after-year) and “cold-chain” infrastructure across Saudi Arabia and the region, as well as in other parts of the world, to increase food security.
Cold-chain refers to a temperature-controlled supply chain to store, transport and distribute perishable goods such as fruits and vegetables, dairy, meat and seafood.
The global fresh food industry has grown by 6 percent annually over the past five years, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
“We’ll be remapping food trade routes to and from the Gulf,” said Cédric Garnier-Landurie, managing partner, chief executive and head of agriculture value chain at Cordiant.
“Fresh foods come from different parts of the world at different times of year, so we want to find the best route for each product and create a robust, food-secured region.”
The GCC faces pressing food security issues despite efforts to become more self-sufficient. In 2020, around 85 percent of its food was imported, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).
GCC governments have prioritised food security in their national economic programmes. For example, Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 earmarks $10 billion of public investment into domestic agriculture and the global food supply chain.
“We want to become one of the leading [most resilient] countries for food security globally,” Prince Saud said.
In 2023 the kingdom said it had achieved self-sufficiency in dairy, dates and eggs with enough excess production for export. Other countries have made sizeable agricultural investments in recent years.
However, the Gulf’s high dependency on imports has made its food supply chain vulnerable to disruption from climate change, trade risks and geopolitical conflict, including the war between Israel and Iran.
Garnier-Landurie said this conflict had not impacted the region’s food supply but that the new company will help ensure there is “no single point of failure” across the chain.
The two 10-year funds the partnership aims to set up will target investments in mid-market to large-cap agricultural companies, agritech and greenfield projects ranging in value from $100 million to $1 billion.
Montréal-based Cordiant was acquired by its partners in 2015 from the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan.
