Sofiprotéol: 40 years of sustainable commitment to the agricultural and food sectors
Sofiprotéol supports your company, offering financing solutions adapted to your projects. Our approach is based on 40 years of commitment to the agricultural and food systems. Investing to support competitive, sustainable, and responsible sectors.
Sofiprotéol provides financial support
Ever since its creation, Sofiprotéol has been investing using its own capital. In this way we have been building strategic and long-term partnership. Offering tailor-made solutions, we intervene with all types of financial instruments, always as a minority shareholder, alone or as a co-investor:
- Equity,
- Quasi-equity (bonds, equity securities),
- Loans, equity loans,
- And other instruments adapted to your needs.
As a business unit of the Avril Group, our priority is to invest in the upstream and downstream sectors of the vegoil and plant protein sector and wider the field crop and livestock sectors.
Our objective consists in supporting the competitiveness of French agriculture, particularly in the seed, plant and animal health, crop input, storage, food processing, and valuation on downstream markets as fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) sectors.
We also work directly and indirectly with players in related sectors, for the benefit of the agricultural and food sectors: health, hygiene, genetics, digital, services, and more.
Sofiprotéol: created by farmers for the agricultural sector
1983: faced with a Europe heavily dependent soymeal imports, professionals of the French vegoil and plant protein industry created a collective industrial and financial tool: Sofiprotéol. Our creation was inspired by their vision of sustainable development in the agricultural world, in the service of the French Farm.
2015: The Group adopted a new governance structure and a new organization. Why? To ensure its independence over the long term and to bolster the presence of the agricultural world at the very cornerstone of its growth strategy. The Group is thus structured around its two businesses: industrial on the one hand, and investor on the other.
The Sofiprotéol Group then changed its name to Avril. The investment business unit of Avril keeps its historical name: Sofiprotéol.
2017: Sofiprotéol raised €100M from its long-standing shareholders, i.e. the oilseed industry’s entities and banking partners, along with two new shareholders who shared Sofiprotéol’s strategy.
2021: Avril reveals its purpose, “Serving the Earth”, consistent with Sofiprotéol’s DNA, it leads to increased attention to the impact of investments made by Sofiprotéol
2022: New fund raising of €145M from its shareholders. Why? To always better respond to the issues of consolidation or development of the agricultural and food sector, the essential nature of which has been confirmed by the covid years.
Our model remains the same: reinvesting our profits back into the sector.
Continued global warming and the ongoing health crisis, soaring raw material prices… agriculture and the agri-food sector faced multiple challenges in 2021, and once again this year had to demonstrate their adaptability and innovative capabilities.
In its role as an architect of responsible sectors, Sofiprotéol continues to support these activities, as it has done for close to 40 years. It still maintains the objective of offering tailor-made financing solutions, consistent with the Group’s purpose: Serving the Earth.