The Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec is entering a strategic agricultural partnership with an Australian government bank.
The investment organization and the Clean Energy Finance Corp. will launch an investment platform targeting farmland across Australia. The platform will make an initial allocation of $178 million over the next three years and its assets will be managed by Gunn Agri Partners, a farmland manager and farm services provider.
One property, a New South Wales row crop farm, has already been acquired. The first asset covers 1,200 hectares of arable crops and areas suitable for grazing and conservation. Weather conditions in the area allow for a range of summer and winter crops, including cereals, oilseeds, pulses and cotton.
Read: Caisse underwriting bridge bonds, OMERS backing financial analytics platform
The move is part of an ongoing sustainable land management strategy the Caisse is pursuing. “The CEFC and CDPQ’s experience — combined with Gunn Agri Partners’ recognized expertise as a land operator — will enable us to aggregate and manage farmland in the attractive Australian market in line with regenerative agriculture practices,” said Emmanuel Jaclot, executive vice-president and head of infrastructure at the Caisse, in a press release.
In other news, the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan is reinvesting in a data centre provider alongside Brookfield Infrastructure Partners.
The two parties have signed a definitive agreement to acquire outstanding equity in Compass Datacenters from RedBird Capital and the Azrieli Group. The terms of the deal, which is expected to close by the end of 2023, weren’t disclosed.
Established in 2011 and based in Dallas, Texas, Compass Datacenters specializes in building customized facilities for enterprise, cloud computing and service providers. The Ontario Teachers’ first invested in the company in 2017.
“We are delighted to continue our partnership with Compass, a market leader with a track record of providing customized data centre solutions to major technology clients,” said Ashvin Malkani, senior managing director of the technology group for private capital at the Ontario Teachers’. “With the acceleration of technology adoption and advent of emerging technologies such as generative [artificial intelligence], we expect that demand for world-class and sustainable data centres will continue to grow in the coming years.”
Read: Ontario Teachers’ invests in U.S. data centre developer