Potato Impact Partners

We closed out our year by attending the Asia-Pacific Agri-food Innovation Summit held as a part of Singapore International Agri-Food Week by Singapore Food Agency and Enterprise Singapore in partnership with Temasek. Over the course of three days, we drew many insights from leaders, investors, and innovators who are working to build agri-food resilience in Asia, including where the agri-food industry currently stands, where it’s struggling, and how we as investors can provide support: 🌊 Scalability: We need to make sure that new farming methods for crops—including seaweed—are scalable to continuously meet growing food demands while taking care to reduce our carbon footprint. 🌊 Data transparency: Data transparency and traceability is critical for providing confidence to stakeholders and customers. We need to collaborate with local communities on the ground to gather accurate data on the impact and sustainability of their work, garnering more external support and trust. 🌊 Fragmented Supply Chains: Fragmented supply chains and a lack of coordination between parts of the chain lead to inconsistent data and rising costs due to inefficiencies and quality issues. One solution is providing early-stage capital for companies to digitalize their supply chains—thus improving efficiency in the production process. 🌊Support for All Stages: While most capital is going towards scaling, more capital needs to be deployed for new innovations. More flexibility needs to be given to farmers shifting into regenerative agriculture to help them transition through the stages of this process. We warmly thank the panelists and attendees who shared insights with us: Nelson Vadassery of our portfolio company Sea6 Energy Pvt Ltd., Maureen Brésil of KUL LOESNINGAR 3 PTE. LTD., Su-E Yap of The Nature Conservancy, Adam Brennan of Thai Union Group PCL., Peter Green and Benedict Tan 陈勇安 of Hatch Blue, Brian Tsuyoshi Takeda of Urchinomics, Amy Melissa Chua of Grow Asia, Simon Davis of SEADLING, Nick Hill of Coast 4C, Aaron Huang of OoNee Sea Urchin Ranch, Risa Luangthongkam, Ph.D. of Thai Wah Public Company Limited, René Benguerel of Blueyou , Peemdej Utsahajit of Charoen Pokphand Foods, Dr. Mar Fernández-Méndez of MacroCarbon, James Horton of Oceanfarmr, Karim Ghannam of 8F Investment Partners, Ahmad Baihaki of Yayasan Konservasi Alam Nusantara, and more. Let’s continue paving the way for a sustainable future in the ocean and beyond. 🌏 Sarah Wan-Yau, Tessa Charupatanapongse, M.S.Ed, Bernice Tang, Linda Tran #AgriFoodWeek #agriculture #agricultureinnovation #sustainableagriculture #seaweedinnovation #bluecarbon #impactinvesting #potatoimpactpartners

Among the events we attended in Amsterdam in October, we also had the pleasure of hearing Mike Velings, Amy Novogratz, Akshat Shah (CFO of Sea6 Energy Pvt Ltd., a Potato Impact and Aqua-Spark portfolio company), Stephen Hall, and Ted Janulis, among other keynote speakers, speak at the Aqua-Spark 10th Annual Investor Gathering. Fostering unity and supporting each other through our networks is essential in the journey towards global sustainable aquaculture and blue economy sectors—and we’re honored to celebrate this year’s wins with this community of likeminded investors. With nearly €500M AUM, Aqua-Spark is the largest investment fund dedicated to sustainable aquaculture. As the community of blue investors grows and we continue to support innovative aquaculture solutions, we look forward to being a part of the next chapter: a future with sustainability and ocean resilience in our coasts. 🌊 Sarah Wan-Yau, Tessa Charupatanapongse, M.S.Ed, Bernice Tang, Linda Tran #AquaSpark #blueinvesting #impactinvesting #impactinvestors #seaweed #sustainablefinance #impactinnovation #Aquaculture #investment

During our trip to Singapore last month, we hosted Sips for Seaweed, where we had a great time catching up with fellow ocean investors and our sister companies at Potato Productions HQ over drinks and seaweed snacks. A warm thank you to everyone who came to meet up with us! We’re looking forward to our next visit to Singapore. Marilyn Kang, Andre Barlian, Azalea Ayuningtyas, Claire Pribula, Darrell Lian, Debby Ng, Eliza Ong, Maureen Brésil, Michael Schindler, Paarth Agarwal, Pei Ya Boon 文培雅, Rob Kaplan, Sheryl Fofaria, Su-E Yap, Wei-Li Woo, Xinyi Tow, Yang Yang, Abbie Jung-Harada, Sarah Wan-Yau, Tessa Charupatanapongse, M.S.Ed, Bernice Tang, Linda Tran #sdg14 #seaweed #investors #oceaninvestors #aquaculture #impactinvesting #blueeconomy #potatoimpactpartners

Do you want to be key in building the global seaweed industry? We are hiring a 🌟CFO to Ocean Rainforest Read more and apply 👇 Marc von Keitz Olavur Ellefsen Beinta Unni Marr Farah Chams Paul Dobbins Johnny Kahlbetzer Peter Bryant James Lindsay Carolina Manhusen Schwab Martin Schwab Tessa Charupatanapongse, M.S.Ed Halldor S. Christian Rehder Magni Arge Know anyone who might be interested?

We’re pleased to announce our investment in the CA$4 million Series A financing round of Cascadia Seaweed, the largest cultivator and processor of seaweed-derived agricultural products in North America, alongside Vere Ventures, WWF Impact (the impact investing arm of World Wildlife Fund US), Norfolk Green Ventures, Realize Impact, and more. Based in Canada, Cascadia Seaweed sustainably cultivates high-quality kelp in partnership with First Nations communities and converts it into biostimulants and agrifeed. They have developed FieldKelp, a liquid kelp extract, and are currently developing RegenaGrow, a biostimulant. Both products serve as natural solutions for farmers to enrich plant resilience and growth, greatly increasing crop yields and enabling regenerative agriculture. The investment will fund the building of a commercial-scale seaweed biorefinery on the West Coast, increasing biomass production, and sales and marketing. Cascadia Seaweed’s scalable nature-based solutions reduce the need for industrial chemical products; improve crop health, resilience and yields; and lower farming emissions—thereby helping alleviate global food insecurity and climate change. We are very excited to support co-founders Michael Williamson, William Collins, and Tony Ethier, as well as CFO Robert Napoli, chief scientist Dr. Jennifer Clark, VP of Operations Matthew Obee and the rest of the team at Cascadia Seaweed in their journey. 🌊 Learn more about the investment in their announcement below. Sarah Wan-Yau, Tessa Charupatanapongse, M.S.Ed, Bernice Tang, Linda Tran #CascadiaSeaweed #sustainablefood #seaweed #aquaculture #investment #oceaninvesting #impactinvesting #innovation #climate

The Potato Impact Partners team will be in Singapore for the 2024 Asia-Pacific Agri-Food Innovation Summit (November 19th-21st), held as a part of Singapore International Agri-Food Week by Singapore Food Agency and Enterprise Singapore in partnership with Temasek. Over the course of three days, the summit will cover climate adaptation, decarbonization, and nourishment in fields ranging from agri-tech to aquaculture. We’re looking forward to hearing more about the role that emerging sustainable seaweed markets will play in accelerating climate resilience, and how we as ocean impact investors can contribute to growing a healthy, nutritious economy in Asia. If you’ll be in Singapore and want to connect with us at the summit, please reach out! Check out their website to read more about the 2024 Agri-food Innovation Summit: https://lnkd.in/ekPdsnQ Graphic by: Asia-Pacific Agri-Food Innovation Summit Sarah Wan-Yau, Tessa Charupatanapongse, M.S.Ed, Bernice Tang, Linda Tran #AgriFoodWeek #agriculture #agricultureinnovation #sustainableagriculture #agritech #aquaculture #sustainableseaweed #potatoimpactpartners

As impact investors backing seaweed innovation, we were thrilled to see seaweed named as a key area of growth to watch in the ocean space at the recent #GIINImpactForum in Amsterdam! We’d also like to express our gratitude to Dale Galvin of Deliberate Capital, LLC, Gayle Peterson of Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, and Lisa Tucker of The Nature Conservancy for sharing your insights. The message is clear: More capital needs to go towards marine resources conservation, and we need to take responsibility to protect the ocean from the overexploitation of its resources. In this, seaweed, a sustainable and versatile resource, could be pivotal as a nature-based solution for ocean health, restoration and resilience, with both environmental and social impact. 🌊 We were delighted to be part of The Global Impact Investing Network gathering of such a wide community of impact investors spanning across geographies, industries and asset classes, all working together to solve the world’s most pressing challenges. Great to catch up with Maud Savary-Mornet of GIIN, Ronald Tardiff of 1000 Ocean Startups, Kristiane Davidson of Ocean Born Foundation, and Maxime Freyss of Südlich Capital! Sarah Wan-Yau, Tessa Charupatanapongse, M.S.Ed, Bernice Tang, Linda Tran #GIIN #impactinvesting #impactinvestors #impactmeasurement #IMM #seaweed #sustainablefinance #impactinnovation #blueeconomy #oceanresilience #oceaninnovation #oceanimpact #SDG14 

Last week, we attended the 1000OS Annual Gathering in Amsterdam Oct 21-22, which brought together 49 organizations backing ocean impact startups with investment, mentorship, and visibility. Thank you to Ronald Tardiff, Sam Zak, Sofía Milian and Yu Jie Law at 1000 Ocean Startups for this opportunity to connect with everyone! Among the key insights we took away from the gathering was that to catalyze more investments into the ocean space, we need: 🌊Education & Advocacy → To do more stakeholder education, raise awareness of the urgent challenges confronting the ocean—and so humankind—and inspire and find more investors who are comfortable with investing through alternative financing. 🌊Capital → To make sure we are giving the right type of capital to entrepreneurs and plugging in holes where it is needed. 🌊Community → To pick the right partners with the same shared values to go on the journey together. 🌊Track record & Transparency → To make known and spread the word about the good work and results achieved by ocean impact startups and investors—and we need more funders joining us. We also felt inspired as we met with many more investors and other individuals driving positive change in the blue economy: Conner Lachenbruch, Gracie White, and Jan Yoshioka of Conservation International Ventures LLC; Chris Wu of Builders Vision; Laura F. Rodriguez Harker of Builders Initiative; Ted Janulis of Investable Oceans; Ingrid H. Maurstad of Katapult Ocean; Thijn van Doorne and Chen Zhu of Aqua-Spark; Virginia Pan, Olivier Raybaud 海力维and Christian Lim of SWEN Capital Partners; Ann Lee Carpenter of Braid Theory; Kristiane Davidson of Ocean Born Foundation; Maxime Freyss of Südlich Capital; Laura Francis of Sea Forward Fund; Adrien Vincent; Markus Böhm and JV P. of Planet Ocean Fund; Antoine Fabre of Mirova; and Rita Sousa of Faber, among more. A huge thank you to everyone for your contributions! #1000OceanStartups #impactinvesting #oceanresilience #blueeconomy #oceaninnovation #oceanimpact #SDG14 #investing #seaweed

Next week, our team will be in Amsterdam for the The Global Impact Investing Network's 2024 Impact Forum (October 23-24). As a new member of GIIN, we look forward to connecting with fellow impact investors, partnering, learning from and contributing to this dynamic community. We are committed #impactinvestors in sustainable seaweed aquaculture, seeking meaningful, productive impact in the areas of food security, climate adaptation and mitigation, and resilient coastal communities. If you're attending the conference and would like to connect with us, feel free to reach out to any of our team members via LinkedIn direct message or the conference app. To find out more about the 2024 GIIN Impact Forum, check out: https://lnkd.in/euTChqtx Sarah Wan-Yau Tessa Charupatanapongse, M.S.Ed Bernice Tang #seaweed #aquaculture #impactinvesting #GIIN #sdg14 #blueeconomy #coastalcommunities #oceanresilience #climateaction #potatoimpactpartners #investments #sustainable

We're proud to be part of the 1000 Ocean Startups community! The coalition is the largest global ocean innovation and investment network with some $1.5 billion in AUM. It has backed 380 transformative ocean startups to date, and remains committed to support at least 1000 by 2030. We'll be at the 1000 OS Annual Gathering and OCEANOVATION in Amsterdam Oct 21-22. Looking forward to seeing everyone there! Sarah Wan-Yau Tessa Charupatanapongse, M.S.Ed Bernice Tang #1000OceanStartups #OceanInnovation #BlueEconomy #sustainability #investing #oceanimpact #SDG14 #impactinvesting