Adisseo, Seventure Partners announce 24m euro first close of AVF.

March 21, 2018

3 Min Read
New investment fund launched dedicated to innovative animal health, nutrition
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Seventure Partners, one of Europe’s leaders in financing innovation and a world leader in Life science microbiome investment, announced 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 24 million euros was corner stoned by Adisseo, the announcement said.

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, Seventure Partners said. 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 the livestock industry.

At a global level, AVF’s investment strategy focuses on the 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 is addressing the challenges centered around limiting the environmental footprint of the industry, the announcement said.

Outside the animal health and nutrition sector, the digital agricultural technology field has seen exponential growth, driven partly by climate change and scarcity in resources and biodiversity, in addition to 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, Seventure Partners noted.

Isabelle de Cremoux, chief executive officer and managing partner at Seventure Partners, said, “Since the implementation of our new strategy in 2013, we have launched several institutional funds with defined investment 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 160 million euros 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, 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."

Adisseo CEO Jean-Marc Dublanc said, “Adisseo is a unique company committed to strategic investments in new disruptive technologies in order to enrich our portfolio of (research and development) innovations while respecting a mode of sustainable growth. ... 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.”

With more than 690 million euros in assets under management as of the end of 2017, Seventure Partners is a leading venture capital firm in Europe. Since 1997, the firm has been investing in innovative businesses with high growth potential in two fields: digital technologies in France and Germany, and life sciences across Europe, Israel and North America.

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