Sustainable food and agriculture investor Cibus Capital is seeking to raise between A$200 million ($132 million; €112 million) and A$300 million for a new fund that will invest in Australian carbon projects.
Cibus Carbon is aiming to deliver approximately 11.25 million Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCU) over a 30-year period, the firm said in a statement. It will plant a mix of tree species. The fund will be managed by a dedicated entity led by Damon Petrie and Jeremy Alun-Jones; Cibus Capital is an adviser to the fund.
Australia has a well-established, regulated carbon credit market, with a record 9.5 million ACCUs issued in the first half of the year, according to a market report from the Australian government, released last week.
“Australia stands out as being probably the poster child of how carbon markets should work,” Cibus founder and chief investment officer Rob Appleby told New Private Markets. “Why? You can actually have [a] land title, as an Australian or as a foreigner, [and] you can actually own land. Big plus.”
“You’ve got a very high integrity system that allows people to trade, to buy and sell, and in this case, this fund is there to address the future needs of emitters who need carbon credits, not today, but in five years’ time, 10, 20, 30 years’ time”, he added.
“We are, at the fund level, not targeting a financial return, but rather an ACCU cost price,” Petrie said. “When we think about what we’re good at, we’re good at identifying land… And our modus operandi here is to be able to generate the highest integrity ACCU at the lowest possible cost and distribute those ACCUs to investors.”
Branching out
The new fund represents Cibus’ first foray into the Australian carbon markets. The firm closed Cibus Fund II – a private equity vehicle that aims to scale sustainable businesses producing, processing or distributing healthy foods – and the agritech venture capital fund Cibus Enterprise Fund II for a combined $645 million last year.
The firm hired BlackRock Alternatives’ former global head of sustainable investing, Kristen Weldon, as its head of natural capital in 2023. Part of her brief was to launch a dedicated natural capital strategy, Weldon told NPM at the time. Weldon departed the firm in July 2024.
“It’s a dialect of the same language we use,” Appleby said. “Yes, we’ve brought Damon and Terence [Ngwerume], and others into the mix. We’re clearly not going to go unarmed into this fight. But we have been thinking about this for the best part of 10 years.”
