The impact investor’s second fund focuses on early-stage companies that are trying to transform the food system from farm to fork, it says.
Dutch impact investing cooperative Pymwymic said it has closed its second fund at €71.5m. Aimed at finding solutions to the most pressing challenges in the global food chain, the fund raised €11.5m more than its initial target.
Investor demand was driven by 250 private investors as well as AGCO, ASR, Invest International, Invest-NL, Klaverblad Verzekeringen, Oost NL and Van Lanschot Kempen.
Maarten van Dam, a partner at Pymwymic, told Impact Investor it was “really important” that institutional investors had joined the Healthy Food Systems Impact Fund II, despite its relatively small size, indicating “a sign of becoming more mature, both as a sector and as a fund,” Van Dam said.
Agri-food scale-ups
Pymwymic, which stands for “Put Your Money Where Your Meaning Is Community”, was founded in 1994. It became a co-owned impact investing cooperative in 2017 and now consists of more than 250 individuals, families, entrepreneurs and angel investors.
The Healthy Ecosystems Impact Fund I, the second fund’s predecessor, closed in 2021 and has invested in nine companies providing solutions to preserve and restore ecosystems.
The second fund will focus on agri-food scale-ups that offer solutions in areas like sustainable farming, food waste reduction, crop intelligence and soil health. So far, it has invested in six companies.
Pymwymic plans to invest between €500,000 and €5m in approximately 15 to 20 companies, with a targeted internal rate of return of around 10% per year, according to Van Dam.
“We think that there shouldn’t be too big of a trade off between making impact and generating financial returns,” said Van Dam. “We have our theory of change, and how impact investing could become the new norm. And one of the elements is creating a decent financial return.”
Entering the mainstream
During the first five years, Pymwymic will help build the portfolio, followed by another five years of growth and maturing the firms before making an exit, according to Van Dam.
“Hopefully we will find a really nice match in the market, because what we would like to do is to change things,” said Van Dam. “Our companies need to become the new norm in the industry, and that is only going to work if they are adopted by the bigger strategic players and the strategic partners and companies.”
Van Dam pointed to Fund I’s investment in Augmenta, a Greek company specialising in precision agriculture technologies, which was sold last year to farm and construction equipment maker CNH Industrial for $110m (€103m).
Pymwymic may launch a third fund “by the end of next year”, Van Dam said.
