Greenhouse builder Apex sells minority stake to Dutch player
Apex Greenhouses, the largest builder of commercial greenhouses in Australia and New Zealand, has agreed to sell a minority stake in the business to Dutch aggregator GreenV BV to strengthen its ability to compete against bigger players.
The family-owned business, which has built projects as big as 130,000 square metres, reckons the investment would help it leverage off GreenV’s expertise, especially in automation and emissions-reduction technologies.
GreenV owns stakes in smart greenhouse technology suppliers across the world and is a key player in the controlled-environment agriculture (CEA) industry.
Green thumb: Apex Greenhouses boss Folco Faber has sold a stake in the business. AFR
Apex’s chief executive Folco Faber told Street Talk on Wednesday the CEA industry is forecast to grow at about 30 per cent a year in the Asia Pacific by 2026, underpinned by population growth, climate change and higher input costs for traditional agriculture.
He said the past decade had seen the business’s typical client morph from a family-run operation to large corporates, often with backing from private equity, pension funds and listed companies – in turn making the projects more complex and capital intensive.
Apex was founded in the late 1970s in New Zealand by Dutch immigrant Leo Faber, and has been led by Folco Faber in Australia for the past 15 years and by James Harris in New Zealand for 12 years. Both would continue with the combined entity.
“Partnering with GreenV gives us a seat at the table, and being a minority investment it allows general manager of New Zealand operations James Harris and I to retain full control of the day-to-day running of the business,” Faber said.
“This is also going to enable us to greatly improve our
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