April 12, 2023

By Lynda Kiernan-Stone, Global AgInvesting Media

Since its launch in 2014, S2G has backed pioneering entrepreneurs and cutting-edge technologies aimed at improving the health and sustainability of our food system, and has deployed capital across the food, agriculture, ocean, and clean energy supply chains in innovators looking to create better outcomes for people and the planet.

With such a commitment to advancing sustainable solutions, it follows that S2G Ventures has launched the $300 million Special Opportunities Fund – an investment vehicle to provide flexible financing for companies focused on creating positive, long-term social and environmental impact. 

S2G explained that this fund, which brings the firm’s assets under management to $2 billion, will work with companies to find the solutions that fit their novel situation and needs, offering flexibility around risk, profile, tenor, and structure.

Focusing on businesses with assets, cashflows, contracts or leases to provide downside protection, the firm will be a full-spectrum investor across debt, equity, or hybrid investments. Additionally, the Special Opportunities Fund will be empowered to support more mature companies as they scale through the provision of a lower cost of capital that is aligned with their risk profile. 

“The transition to a more resilient and efficient economy will require significant investments in capital-intensive and asset-oriented businesses. Instead of a friction to scale, we see this as an opportunity to ringfence risk, create value for investors and provide a solution the market increasingly needs,” said Sanjeev Krishnan, senior managing director and chief investment officer, S2G Ventures. 

“The Special Opportunities fund expands our toolkit, builds on the subject matter expertise of our sector funds and enables S2G to work with companies across the broader climate tech market.”

Climate considerations are now a part of nearly every investment decision. As key players, climate think tank Planet Tracker recently expressed how institutional financiers have the power to cut a possible 60 percent of food system emissions, and 20 percent of total global emissions through the companies they invest in. To accomplish this, the think tank goes on to estimate that the annual investment required would be $300-$350 billion. 

One of the leading names assuming this mantle of responsibility is S2G Ventures, which through its management of a historical real assets and credit portfolio and the new Special Opportunities Fund, has backed a number of companies and themes across asset finance. These include next-gen infrastructure financing through controlled environment agriculture, renewables development projects, natural asset investments that support conservation, backing the gray-to-green transition by helping incumbent companies decarbonize their supply chains, and by taking creative approaches to collateral. 

Through its latest fund, S2G has already made six investments including its latest in Circulus – a recycler of low-density polyethylene that converts plastic waste into post-consumer resins for commercial and industrial use. 

Additionally, the Special Opportunities Fund is able to create new companies to capitalize upon market white space, such as Clear Frontier, an agricultural management company that S2G helped create to promote sustainable farming and to fill gaps in the U.S. organic grain supply chain.

And as time marches on, S2G stated that the fund intends to identify other white spaces and create new joint ventures or individual companies to fill those gaps. 

~ Lynda Kiernan-Stone is editor in chief with GAI Media, and is managing editor and daily contributor for Global AgInvesting’s AgInvesting Weekly News and  Agtech Intel News, as well as HighQuest Group’s Unconventional Ag. She can be reached at lkiernan-stone@globalaginvesting.com.

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