Mr. d’Elia, looking at your investment portfolio, it seems that it is quite differentiated, spanning from the water treatment to the bio-ethanol manufacturing.
Why investing in bio-ethanol?
Xeon Fund is a social responsible investor and when selecting the new investment targets we are led by three main criteria:
1. The profitability for our investors
2. The social impact in terms of improvement of the life standards in the communities where the fund invests
3. The environmental impact, in terms of neutrality of the investment or even better making a clear contribution to the environment.
Enercap investments in the bio-ethanol cover all the above-mentioned principles.
Furthermore the demand for bio-ethanol is larger than the current offer and in the next decade the gap is going to increase due also to the blending mandates imposing larger percentage of bio-ethanol in the fuel we buy at the gas station. Today we are between 5 and 10%, the trend is to go up to 20%.
Where are you making the bio-ethanol investments?
Bio-ethanol is an alcohol and for the distillation process you need a starch-rich crop. Most of the manufacturers traditionally use corn or sugar cane.
Enercap has decided to go for an alternative solution, which is more sustainable and environmentally friendly: a non-edible cassava variant.
The main advantage of cassava is that it grows abundantly in sub-tropical countries and is not in competition with edible crops like corn, “fuelling” the debate about “food for tank”.
For the first investments we looked at South-East Asia and we selected the Philippines for the climate and the business environment.
Other sub-tropical countries are on the plate.
What about the Real Estate strategy of Xeon Fund?
Well, we would say we have the full in-house expertise in evaluating and managing investments in the hospitality industry. This is the sector we are currently busy with.
A large investment is currently under way in an exclusive resort in Europe.
Nevertheless we envisage keeping an opportunistic approach to the Real Estate and we make sure we adopt a broader scope in the analysis of the market.
We look also at distressed properties and on a case per case basis we decide to go for it or not.
For doing so we have a dedicated advisory board made of seasoned specialists and professionals advising the board of the fund.
What is to be understood under “water treatment”?
Water treatment means water desalination and water purification.
The fund’s investments aim at providing the water supply to municipalities in regions of the world suffering under water scarcity.
They are mostly locate din the MENA region.
The access to water is a key factor for the local development and in extreme cases it can seriously endanger the living standards of the local populations.
The water related projects are another example of Social Responsible Investments “made by Xeon Fund”.
Xeon Fund SIF SICAV SCA was founded back in 2011 and is a Private Equity umbrella fund with 3 Sub-funds. The fund has been awarded for its Corporate Social and environmental investment strategy.The fund concentrates on Alternative Energies, Water Production and Real Estate. It operates from Luxembourg and is authorised by the Luxembourg regulator CSSF with Visa 2015/101265-7225-0-PC.
Xeon International is the initiator of Xeon Fund and aims to create long-term business value for its clients and investors by offering a unique blend of result-oriented, risk sharing strategic value creation and implementation services. It operates within four functional areas: Corporate Finance – Private Equity – Advisory and Family Office services.