Sierra Leone: Capitol Foods receives debt funding from two impact funds
Cordaid Investment Management (CIM) and Triodos-Hivos Fund have teamed up to invest $1 million of debt in Capitol Foods Limited in Sierra Leone.
Capitol Foods’ popular Sierra Juice is made of locally grown fruit and sold all over Sierra Leone.
CIM and Triodos-Hivos Fund, two Netherlands-based impact investment funds, co-financed Capitol Foods’ expansion of its local fruit processing capacity to meet the growing demand for its Sierra Juice beverage products. The debt facility will also enable the company to provide greater market access for thousands of fruit farmers in Sierra Leone.
For Capitol Foods, the timing of the loan was extremely valuable. Not only did it facilitate the purchase and installation of its three-tonnes-per-hour fruit processing plant, but it did that during the peak of the Covid-19 outbreak. Hamza Hashim, CEO of Capitol Foods, said: “This loan created an immediate relief to both our company’s input supply chain and to thousands of rural farmers around Sierra Leone; farmers whose access to the market was limited due to movement restrictions. The loan will also support our working capital needs as global supply chains and logistics take a hit due to Covid-19 effect.”
“CIM and Triodos combined knowledge and competencies to structure this deal that will meet the needs and growth plan of Capitol Foods. Leveraging on CIM’s presence in Sierra Leone, we carried on with the due diligence of the investment during the pandemic. This prevented further delays of the expansion project,” says Lorisa Canillas, senior investment manager at CIM.
The loan will help Capitol Foods source more than 5,000 tonnes of fruit annually, impacting around 10,000 farmers. “The loan will also support our working capital needs as global supply chains and logistics take a hit due to Covid-19 effect,” says Hashim.
“We are proud to have been part of Capitol’s journey since 2016 when we provided a first trade finance facility with Hivos-Triodos Fund. And this journey continues with a debt facility, in partnership with Cordaid,” says Joke van der Ven, senior investment manager at Triodos Investment Management.
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