January 28, 2025

By Gerelyn Terzo, Global AgInvesting Media

SLM Partners’ Iberian orchards fund has reached a milestone alongside a key investment. SLM Partners, a real asset manager specializing in regenerative ag and sustainable forestry, has achieved final close of its SLM Silva Europe Fund, amassing €30 million (US$31.2 million) in commitments and marking its first move into European ag. Dutch investment management firm Wire Group has invested in the final closing of the fund, marking its first real-asset investment from its second fund-of-funds, the Wire Thrive Fund. Wire Group counts SLM Partners among the trailblazers of the regenerative movement.

SLM Silva Europe has committed to converting at least 50 percent of its properties to organic certification, while also showing that the assets can be net positive for carbon, which translates to sequestering more carbon in trees and soil than what is emitted through operations. SLM’s investment team has linked their carried interest to attaining these impact key performance indicators, or KPIs.

In response, impact investors have flocked to the fund, including fund-of-funds and family offices seeking investment opportunities that combine real nature impact with competitive real asset returns, per SLM.

With $760 million in global assets under management across the U.S., Australia and Europe, SLM Silva Europe represents the firm’s debut into European agriculture, though the Iberian region has been on its radar for years. The fund has already begun deploying capital, including over €22 million (US$22.9 million) into orchards across Spain and Portugal, emphasizing diversification through permanent crops like nuts and olives, across microclimates within the Iberian peninsula.

Iberia is an attractive region for orchard crops for several reasons, not least the ideal climate comprising mild wet winters and hot dry summers that lend themselves to growing high-value Mediterranean orchard crops. It’s rare to find a region in which these crops can thrive, particularly in developed economies. Water stress notwithstanding, Spain and Portugal have an advantage owing to higher rainfall compared with similar production regions like California coupled with the availability of the Alqueva dam and reservoir, Europe’s largest artificial lake.

Wire Group’s commitment supports its role as an impact investor in the regenerative ag space. It will allow SLM to invest into an additional asset on the Iberian Peninsula, in keeping with the real asset manager’s strategy to catapult regenerative farming into the mainstream while highlighting its benefits for both human and environmental health. Wire Group reportedly has earmarked approximately 20 percent of its fund to invest in real assets, for which it has long considered SLM Partners.

With a mission to help regenerative land management gain scale, SLM Partners is teaming up with experienced permanent crop operators boasting deep integration within their respective value chains as well as a commitment to regenerative agriculture practices.

SLM Partners Co-Founder Paul McMahon stated, “There are better ways to practice agriculture than the conventional ones, and we seek out operators that are ready to put these into practice. They’re proving that regenerative agriculture works, that it delivers environmental outcomes and that it’s profitable. We’re in the business of developing investment strategies to accelerate this change.”
 

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