October 6, 2016

The Houston Municipal Employees Pension System (HMEPS) has committed $20 million to Tillridge Global Agribusiness Partners II.

Tillridge Global Agribusiness Partners is an agribusiness private equity firm and an affiliate of NGP Energy Capital Management. NGP Energy Capital was founded in 1988 in Irving Texas and Tillridge began investing in 2012 through an allocation within the private equity fund NGP Natural Resources X LP, according to thefirm’s website. After that commitment, NGP Global Agribusiness Partners (NGP GAP) went on to raise $402 million in 2014, completing the final close of NGP Agribusiness Follow-on Fund LP, which ended up closing oversubscribed by 25 percent.

Tillridge, which focuses on investments along the agribusiness supply value chain — from commodity processing and storage to transportation and logistics to food service manufacturing has made ten investments to date including commitments to Agspring, ILTA Grain, and Novita Nutrition.

HMEPS ended its fiscal year 2015 with $2.46 billion in assets after seeing a total return of 3.4 percent for the year. For the ten year period ending June 30, 2015 the pension fund had an annualized return of 8.3 percent, with double digit returns in the six out of ten past fiscal years. Private equity accounts for 16 percent of its diversified portfolio, while real assets account for 10 percent according to its 2015 report to participants.

This commitment by HMEPS to Tillridge Global Agribusiness follows closely upon a $50 million investment made to the same fund by the Maine Public Employees’ Retirement Fund (MainePERS) in late September. MainePERS also made an allocation of $50 million to the Homestead Capital USA Farmland Fund II in July of this year.