I am delighted to share the latest developments from ISIF. So far in 2024, ISIF has closed a further €927m in investments across our key themes of climate, scaling indigenous businesses, housing and enabling investments and food and agriculture.
The focus of this newsletter is on our Housing and Enabling Investments. Recently we announced the completion of four investment commitments totalling €229m aimed at accelerating the delivery of new homes in Ireland. Housing and enabling investments is one of ISIF’s four key investment themes, reflecting the sector’s strategic importance to the Irish economy and to Irish society.
Further detail on our recent investment activity under our other three priority themes of Climate, Scaling Indigenous Businesses, and Food and Agriculture can be found in this newsletter.
We have also included an update on our Diversity and Inclusion initiative with regards to female-founded and female-led investment firms from our Director, Nick Ashmore.
We are excited about our progress and look forward to continuing our collaborative efforts with our partners.
Thank you for your ongoing support and partnership.
The Housing and Enabling investment theme of ISIF's Impact Strategy targets significant investment across residential development, urban regeneration, commercial real estate, and infrastructure.
ISIF’s residential strategy is focused on supporting the delivery of new mass market homes across a range of dwelling type and tenure. This is primarily executed by partnering with a mix of new and existing funders in the market. By broadening the pool of funders for viable projects and creating a more robust capital market ecosystem for Irish homebuilding over the long-term, ISIF can amplify the impact of its capital in the market, and Irish Homebuilders get access to risk capital from a wider variety of sources than would otherwise be the case.
In July 2023, ISIF launched a new €400m Equity for Homebuilding programme to complement its existing housing investment activities. The targeted investments are focused on addressing the identified equity gap which it is believed limits the ability of many Irish homebuilders to scale and deliver larger scale schemes across multiple sites. ISIF is addressing this gap through the provision of equity capital across a range of platforms and investments to support construction of new homes. As part of this programme of investments, ISIF is supporting a range of new (and existing) funds to expand their operations in the Irish market and provide funding for a wide variety of housing types and tenures, all of which will support the development of new homes for owner-occupiers, renters, people who need social housing and students. ISIF has already committed €129m of the Equity for Homebuilding programme across three investments - Ardstone Residential Income Fund, Irish Homebuilding Equity Fund and Summix Capital Partners.
This is complemented by a €100m commitment to Avenue Capital Group including a €25m commitment to Avenue Europe Special Situations Fund V and a €75m commitment to a dedicated co-investment fund that will greatly enhance the lending capacity of Castlehaven to support the construction of new mass market homes nationwide. Based on ISIF’s model of using its capital to act as a catalyst for attracting third-party co-investment, ISIF anticipates that that these four new investments could unlock up to €1bn of homebuilding activity through crowding in third party capital from domestic and international partners.
Since inception, ISIF has made in excess of €1.5bn of commitments to the Irish homebuilding sector, and ISIF funded entities have already delivered over 14,200 new homes. ISIF’s investment programme is targeting the delivery of over 25,000 new homes by 2030, with over 16,000 of these to be completed by 2025.
Critically, ISIF’s investments in Irish homebuilding has supported the emergence of a new cohort of debt and equity funders such as Activate and Pearl and has been instrumental in crowding in third-party capital to support construction of new homes. To date, ISIF’s commitments have unlocked over €5.0bn of homebuilding activity.
ISIF continues to have a strong pipeline of investments in place which we believe can make a positive impact on the sustainable delivery of new homes in Ireland.
Press Release
ISIF announces €229m series of investments to accelerate delivery of new homes
Commitment to the Muzinich Pan-European Private Debt III fund targeting the provision of loans for growth and acquisition to Irish SME and lower mid-market companies.
€15m commitment to Next Food Capital, a private equity fund managed by Kharis Capital. Next Food Capital (the “Fund”) invests in early-growth stage foodtech companies, helping them scale across European markets
€125m commitment to a new fund - Foresight Energy Infrastructure Partners II (FEIP II) - to invest in renewable energy generation; energy storage; and grid infrastructure.
Blume Equity is a climate-tech growth stage investor. A later stage venture investor, Blume invests in businesses addressing climate and environmental challenges by focusing on sustainable food systems; responsible consumption & production; and healthy environment.
An impact focused venture capital fund that will focus on Seed and Series A investments in climate-tech and health-tech. Core investment themes include sustainable food systems, electrification, energy efficiency, and responsible consumption.
In November 2022, ISIF announced its ambition to invest a minimum of €50 million over the next two years in private equity and venture capital firms that have a minimum of 50% female ownership by launching a diversity and inclusion initiative.
By establishing an ambition for investing in female-led investment opportunities, ISIF is seeking to demonstrate its commitment to addressing gender inequality and promoting greater diversity at senior levels – both within ISIF and in the companies and funds in which it invests.
ISIF has closed commitments totalling €36 million under the diversity and inclusion initiative to date and has a strong pipeline of opportunities to progress. I am delighted to announce that through this initiative ISIF has invested in Blume Equity Fund I and Norrsken Venture Capital Fund II which are both climate themed funds addressing the energy transition challenge.
This is an encouraging start, and the pace of commitments reflect the quality of female-led private equity funds that ISIF is seeing in the market.
The initiative aims to build on existing measures by ISIF to drive greater female participation at senior levels within the financial sector. These include establishing a dedicated programme to measure female representation at leadership positions within the ISIF portfolio, including the extent of female participation on Boards, at CEO level, and investment decision-making level.
At ISIF we have a wide range of people to match the diversity of our functions. We enable our people to reach their potential by adopting a culture of self leadership, collaboration and learning.
