On the 27th of January 2020, ACF II announced that they had signed an agreement to acquire Climate Friendly, Australia’s market leading consultancy group in the land-based carbon offset program to farmers around Australia.
Climate Friendly is an agriculture consultancy group that provides sustainable practices for harvesting carbon credits for farmers and land harvesters. To date the company has over 120 registered carbon projects around Australia, which in turn have delivered over 14 million in carbon credits to farmers from these projects The methodology adopted by consultants is to aid farmers in removing carbon from the atmosphere and storing it in their trees and soil, or by optimising their agribusiness management practices to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. They do this by following an approved carbon project method. By adopting these practices, it enables farmers to increase the carbon retention in their land in exchange for government issued Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCU’s ).
The ‘Carbon Farming Initiative Act 2011’ introduced ACCU’s as an incentive to reduce carbon output to reach the government’s goal of net zero emissions by 2050. As a result of these government intentions, carbon farming as a practice within the agriculture industry is becoming a vastly recognised component of land harvesting among farmers around Australia.
In May 2022, Adamantem Capital Fund II announced the partial (exit) sale of Climate Friendly, Australia’s leading carbon farming project services provider, to Mitsui & Co.
The sale marked an exceptionally strong investment return across a 1.2 year hold period with Adamantem selling 33.7% of their shareholding and retaining a majority shareholding upon completion of the transaction. The partnership with Mitsui & Co will aid Climate Friendly to scale up efforts to expand the consultancy network and store more carbon in land, further enhancing the company’s market leading position in carbon farming development in Australia.
Skye Glenday, co-CEO of Climate Friendly, noted that “With Adamantem’s support, we have invested in new talent and technology to scale up our support to partners in their carbon farming projects. We are looking forward to accelerating our impact, including through our new integrated farming method, and scaling up rapidly in this critical climate decade to deliver on our carbon abatement target of 100 Mt by 2025.”
Adamantem believe that the partnership with Mitsui will provide deep value in the decarbonisation space, enabling Climate Friendly’s access to key international markets for the next phase of growth.
