Stevia is a natural sweetener which has an enormous potential in the food market to replace the artificial sweeteners. It is 300 times sweeter than sugar and has no calories. Agronutrical has established a small farm and was seeking assistance in raising funds to expand this into a full production farm with an extraction plant. Value of the project was about US$100m.
ACE were retained to source and structure funding for the project and assist in the project management in respect of the financial drawdowns. This is an ongoing project at this time.
We sought to fully understand the project, which by its nature is unusual, and through our network we seek to attract funding. We produced a fully worked up business plan to support the applications for funding. Once funding is secured, we will act as project monitor to ensure the project is progressing to allow the appropriate drawdowns to take place.
Agronutrical benefitted from our project finance skills to assist it to present appropriate documentation and source funding outside the conventional banking and capital markets which were not available to an agricultural project of this nature.
