Press

Opal Foods Acquires Moark’s Midwest Egg Production Assets

Opal Foods, an entity created by AGR Partners in association with Rose Acre Farms and Weaver Brothers, has purchased Moark’s Midwest egg production assets.

Opal Foods expects annual revenues to exceed $200 million with its operations in Missouri and Colorado, as well as a new cage-free farm in Neosho. Many of the farms purchased were recently renovated to comply with California’s future production standards, and some will be among the most modern in the country.

Slow supply growth raises ‘peak salmon’ fears

Could the world be facing “peak salmon”?

Strong demand and slowing production growth have sent prices to record highs, making life good for salmon farmers.

“The elimination of bottlenecks will only bring you marginal supply growth,” says Ejnar Knudsen at AGR Partners, a California-based private equity group with a food and agriculture focus. He sees future production capacity being limited to slightly more than 3m tonnes, just 14 per cent higher than it is now.

US private equity execs travel to Chile with $100m for salmon deals

Executives from US private equity AGR Partners are travelling down to Chile next week, with plans to invest in the country’s struggling salmon sector.

The California-based investment firm, backed by a US pension fund, has between $20 million to $100m to spend on the right opportunity, Ejnar Knudsen, its managing member and a former Rabobank executive, told Undercurrent News.

Private Equity Fund Sees All the Right Drivers in Seafood

Knudsen was previously part of the management team at Western Milling, a California-based diversified feed company. His interest in the seafood sector reaches back to around a year and half ago. The more he researched the industry, the more he was convinced AGR needed to be in the space with the industry’s key drivers.

“I looked at it and said, ‘I want to invest more in these animal proteins that have this high growth rate and upside ‘Superfood’ optionality,’” he said.

Ridley Corporation Case Study

AGR Purchases 19.5% of Ridley Corporation: Read about Ridley and some highlights of the investment.

AGR purchases 19.5% stake in Ridley Corp.

A California-based private equity fund has purchased a 19.5% stake in Australia-based Ridley Corp.

The stock feed and rendering business said it understood that AGR Partners — a private equity fund set up last year and professing a long-term approach to investment in agriculture — bought the stake from long-term holder GPG, which is in the process of winding down an international investment portfolio.

AGR Swallows 19.5% of Australia’s Biggest Animal Feed Company

U.S. private equity firm AGR Partners has bought Guinness Peat Group PLC’s stake in Australia’s largest animal feed company, a person familiar with the matter said Monday.

Guinness Peat Group raised 54 million Australian dollars (US$55 million) from the sale of its 19.5% stake in Ridley Corp. The shares traded at 90 cents a share, representing a 14.6% premium to Ridley’s closing price Friday.