LOIM announces first close of its Plastic Circularity Fund

The Fund received strong investor interest with new commitments from Dow and LyondellBasell 

Lombard Odier Investment Managers (“LOIM”) today announced the successful first close of its Plastic Circularity Fund following interest from corporates, pension funds and private investors.

Among the initial investors to make commitments in the LOIM Plastic Circularity Fund SCSp (“Plastic Circularity Fund”) are Dow and LyondellBasell. Their support complements commitments by leading, sustainably-minded institutional and private financial investors.

The Plastic Circularity strategy is a private equity strategy that aims to reduce plastic waste and greenhouse gas emissions in the plastic value chain while delivering market returns. This fund meets the standards of a Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) Article 8 Fund as outlined by the European Supervisory Authorities, which means the Fund “promotes, among other characteristics, environmental or social characteristics, or a combination of those characteristics, provided that the companies in which the investments are made follow good governance practices.”

The Fund follows a technical, impact and financial screening process to identify and invest in companies offering innovative plastic materials designed for reuse and recyclability, and improved collection, sorting and recycling solutions. It leverages the technical and industrial expertise of the Alliance to End Plastic Waste (“AEPW”) through a unique collaboration to accelerate the transition towards a plastic circular economy, and will also have an advisory committee.

In addition to investing in the Fund, Dow’s Stephanie Kalil, Senior Global Business Director Polyethylene, will join the Fund’s advisory committee. She brings insights on business management, strategy, technology and materials science innovation paired with deep industry knowledge. 

Kalil commented: “Consumer demand, science and innovation are converging at this point in time to pave the path for a circular future. The LOIM Plastics Circularity Fund will help enable novel solutions for plastics circularity, supporting Dow’s bold ambition announced last year to transform plastic waste and alternative feedstock to commercialize 3 million metric tons of circular and renewable solutions annually by 2030.” 

The Fund will further draw on the deep expertise of LOIM’s sustainability research and investment teams, who provide robust, science-based forecasting and analysis that underpins the company’s wider investment offering and helps unlock new opportunities across its suite of thematic investment strategies.
With this global investment fund strategy focused on plastic circularity throughout the entire value chain, LOIM consolidates its position at the forefront of sustainable investing.

“Advancing circular solutions to meet the global challenge of plastic waste requires engagement and collaboration across the value chain to increase available material supply to meet the robustly growing demand for sustainable products,” said Yvonne van der Laan, executive vice president, Circular and Low Carbon Solutions at LyondellBasell. “LOIM’s Plastic Circularity Fund aligns with our ambition to help end plastic waste in the environment and accelerate the development of a circular, low carbon economy.”

Jean-Pascal Porcherot, Co-Head of LOIM and Managing Partner at Lombard Odier commented: “As regulators, consumers and corporates address the plastic challenge, LOIM’s plastic circularity strategy aims to capture investment opportunities arising from innovative solution-providers, while also enabling investors to generate measurable impact both on plastic waste and on greenhouse gas emissions. The strategy reflects LOIM’s strategic commitment to creating innovative impact strategies for clients and highlights the significant role that private markets play in delivering sustainability outcomes and attractive financial returns.”

Christopher Tritten, Global Head of Private Assets at LOIM, added: “With this new strategy, we continue the expansion of our Private Assets franchise, into direct investments, which started in 2017. It provides a new fertile ground to leverage Lombard Odier’s access to leading private equity managers and high-quality co-investment opportunities. In addition, we bring a highly specialized angle to the plastic value chain thanks to our in-house research team and our technical advisors from the Alliance to End Plastic Waste. Conversations confirm that, in the deal flow we see, company management and their investors will directly benefit from our expertise and networks.”

Plastics enable innovations in 30% of global economy, including construction, medical, transportation and food safety. There are limited substitutes in more than 50% of these applications and these alternatives do not provide similar performance. However, the global issue of plastic pollution is a widely recognized challenge, with significant consequences for our planet. LOIM is uniquely positioned with this new strategy to catalyze investment into solutions that tackle this challenge head on. This is a solvable problem where more innovations, start-ups and investments are needed to scale.
 

At Lombard Odier Investment Managers, we are rethinkers with one goal in mind. To provide our clients with outstanding investment solutions that meet their needs for the long term and evolve to thrive in the challenging world in which we all live. 

We are focused investment specialists, seeking out investment opportunities that lie on less trodden paths, where our diverse and talented team can add genuine, persistent, value to our clients. We constantly rethink what we know and do, innovating to create new strategies and develop new ways of investing. 

We believe that the next economic revolution has already begun, and that sustainability will be a major driver of returns for the foreseeable future and beyond. For those with the skills to adapt to this new reality, sustainability would create new sources of alpha, open up new investment opportunities and lead to enhanced return and reduced portfolio risk.

Our team of sustainability experts combine sophisticated data sources, academic rigour, and technical innovation to create leading-edge, science-based tools that provide unique insights that are available to all our investment professionals. 

These unique insights are reflected directly in our growing range of dedicated sustainable investment strategies that are aligned to this core belief, that our economic model must move from being Wasteful, Idle, Lopsided and Dirty to become Circular, Lean, Inclusive and Clean. We call this The CLIC^® Economy.

With more than 180 investment professionals, we are a global business with a network of 13 offices across Europe, Asia and North America and have assets under management of 63 billion CHF (as of 31 December 2022).

About LOIM Private Equity

Lombard Odier IM has been investing in private assets since 2007 and currently manages 8 billion USD (as at 31 June 2022) in private equity, infrastructure and private debt across different funds offering primary and secondary funds’ investments and co-investments. Since 2017 the team has realised over 70 direct investments into private companies, sourced from its network of leading private-equity managers globally.
 

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