Our investments

We are focused on investing in businesses located in the south of the South Island. We are interested in businesses with an appetite for growth, with stable cash flows and an ability to partner with management through equity participation. We are committed to building strong relationships with owners and management teams.

We seek regional privately-owned businesses that:

• have clear strategies for growth;
• have several years of sustained profit performance;
• are positioned in industries and markets being shaped by positive long-term trends;
• have defensible competitive advantage;
• have clearly defined risks; and
• have opportunities to improve performance through governance, management or operations input.

We can invest in the following scenarios:

• Growth – the company has been trading profitably for a sustained period and is seeking capital to scale either organically or through acquisitions;
• Management Buy Out (MBO) – we fund proven incumbent management teams to acquire the business they’re currently running from all or some of the existing owners;
• Management Buy In (MBI) – we will fund proven third-party managers to acquire or buy into an existing business;
• Partial or full sell downs by existing shareholders – in certain circumstances we can invest in a business to permit existing owners to free up capital, subject to all parties remaining fully aligned to the ongoing success of the business.

While we would not normally invest in early stage companies, we are nonetheless interested in building a relationship with high-potential companies that may lead to an investment at a later stage. We may also be able to introduce investors interested in early stage capital.

We currently have investments in the following companies:

BISON Group Limited

BISON provides container lifting and container weighing solutions to exporters, forwarders, military and logistics companies in over 30 countries. With an impressive client base including the US Army, US Navy, NASA, Virgin Orbital and Emirates Team New Zealand, they enable companies to handle heavy freight safely, efficiently and with accurate weights anywhere, anytime and for less.

Energia Potior Limited

Energia Potior Limited is a Southland based company which is majority-owned by Invercargill family company Yunca Engineering. EnPot, is a green-tech solution for a real-world problem, allowing aluminium smelters to modulate their energy consumption, making them more compatible with variable electricity supply from renewable generation. Smelters can now be re-imagined as “Demand Response Providers” or “Virtual Grid Storage Batteries” while continuing to be productive aluminium smelters. With Enpot, smelters can release large amounts of electricity back to the grid in times of high energy demand or lower than normal generation, at a much lower cost than other storage options.

Fiordland Lobster Company Limited

The Fiordland Lobster Company is New Zealand’s largest exporter of live Fiordland rock lobster. The company contracts fishermen suppliers in Fiordland and other parts of New Zealand to provide catches of the premium New Zealand red lobster for export to China and other key markets.

Izon Science Limited

Izon Science is a nanotechnology company that develops and sells nano-scale particle analysis and isolation tools. The company’s instruments are in use in a wide range of research institutes and universities around the world.

New Zealand Beeswax Limited

New Zealand Beeswax is a specialist beeswax processing and manufacturing company and a pre-eminent supplier of bee health, feed, protein and hive maintenance products, as well as a range of woodware and other consumables to NZ honey producers.

Nomos Limited

Nomos One serves a global market providing a cloud-based SaaS platform for leases which is IFRS 16 compliant and provides lease management, lease accounting and contract management software in one. This software helps large lessee businesses work up to 90% more efficiently and to comply with the new lease accounting standards.