Agrex (IFC-40474)

Countries
  • Sri Lanka
Geographic location where the impacts of the investment may be experienced.
Financial Institutions
  • International Finance Corporation (IFC)
International, regional and national development finance institutions. Many of these banks have a public interest mission, such as poverty reduction.
Project Status
Proposed
Stage of the project cycle. Stages vary by development bank and can include: pending, approval, implementation, and closed or completed.
Bank Risk Rating
B
Environmental and social categorization assessed by the development bank as a measure of the planned project’s environmental and social impacts. A higher risk rating may require more due diligence to limit or avoid harm to people and the environment. For example, "A" or "B" are risk categories where "A" represents the highest amount of risk. Results will include projects that specifically recorded a rating, all other projects are marked ‘U’ for "Undisclosed."
Voting Date
Oct 16, 2017
Date when project documentation and funding is reviewed by the Board for consideration and approval. Some development banks will state a "board date" or "decision date." When funding approval is obtained, the legal documents are accepted and signed, the implementation phase begins.
Borrower
Agrex Limited
A public entity (government or state-owned) provided with funds or financial support to manage and/or implement a project.
Sectors
  • Agriculture and Forestry
The service or industry focus of the investment. A project can have several sectors.
Investment Type(s)
Equity
The categories of the bank investment: loan, grant, guarantee, technical assistance, advisory services, equity and fund.
Investment Amount (USD)
$ 30.00 million
Value listed on project documents at time of disclosure. If necessary, this amount is converted to USD ($) on the date of disclosure. Please review updated project documents for more information.
Project Cost (USD)
$ 35.00 million
Value listed on project documents at time of disclosure. If necessary, this amount is converted to USD ($) on the date of disclosure. Please review updated project documents for more information.
Primary Source

Original disclosure @ IFC website

Updated in EWS Oct 26, 2017

Disclosed by Bank Sep 14, 2017


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Project Description
If provided by the financial institution, the Early Warning System Team writes a short summary describing the purported development objective of the project and project components. Review the complete project documentation for a detailed description.
The proposed IFC investment is up to an aggregate of $25 million of equity capital in Agrex Limited, Dubai (“Agrex” or the “Company”) to fund incremental working capital and capital expenditure for expansion of the Company’s operations across Sri Lanka, Uganda, Ethiopia and Philippines. The Company is an emerging player in the organic food industry, and is engaged in procurement, processing and exports of long shelf life organic products having operations in Uganda, Ethiopia and Philippines. The Company’s operational assets include two processing facilities: one leased virgin coconut oil (VCO) processing facility in Philippines and a recently commissioned fully owned sesame seed cleaning and sorting facility in Uganda. In addition to this, the Company has a contract manufacturing arrangement with a third party Soyabean and Sesame processing plant and warehouses in Ethiopia. As a forward integration of organic Cotton, the Company also has arrangements with third party textile manufacturers for its organic clothing business. The products it operates in include Soya, Spices, Sugar, Cotton, Cocoa, VCO, Sesame, Chia seeds and Vanilla. The Company has organic certified farming arrangements with small holder farmers and farmer groups in Uganda, Ethiopia and Philippines for commodities like Soya, Cotton, Sugar, Sesame, Cocoa, Vanilla, Coconut and various Spices with a total area of around 35,000 Hectares certified farms across these countries. The Company does not own or lease any of these farms. It only procures organically grown produce from the farmers/planters.
Investment Description
Here you can find a list of individual development financial institutions that finance the project.
The sponsor, Sameer Mehra (who is also the CEO of Agrex), owns approximately 45 percent equity shares in Agrex while the balance 55 percent is held by two leading investors - Nexus India Venture Investments (“Nexus”) and Capricorn Investment Group (“Capricorn”) through their investment vehicles. Sameer Mehra, a first-generation entrepreneur in the organic products space, has been educated in India and the United States and worked earlier in United States and India .

Contact Information
This section aims to support the local communities and local CSO to get to know which stakeholders are involved in a project with their roles and responsibilities. If available, there may be a complaint office for the respective bank which operates independently to receive and determine violations in policy and practice. Independent Accountability Mechanisms receive and respond to complaints. Most Independent Accountability Mechanisms offer two functions for addressing complaints: dispute resolution and compliance review.
Agrex Limited Varun Bhassin Director +971-56-261-2512 info@agrieximfze.com Fortune Executive Tower, Office #2004, Cluster T, JLT, Dubai. www.agrieximorganic.com ACCOUNTABILITY MECHANISM OF IFC The Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (CAO) is the independent complaint mechanism and fact-finding body for people who believe they are likely to be, or have been, adversely affected by an IFC or MIGA- financed project. If you submit a complaint to the CAO, they may assist you in resolving a dispute with the company and/or investigate to assess whether the IFC is following its own policies and procedures for preventing harm to people or the environment. If you want to submit a complaint electronically, you can email the CAO at CAO@worldbankgroup.org. You can learn more about the CAO and how to file a complaint at http://www.cao-ombudsman.org/

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