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Webinar Series: Unlocking Finance and Scalability for Cold Rooms as a Service

October 31, 2023

The SET Alliance, in collaboration with BASE Foundation’s Your Virtual Cold Chain Assistant project is hosting a new webinar series to explore how to tackle the financing gap for agricultural cold storage solutions using Cooling-as-a-Service.

Did you know that almost 40% of the world’s food goes to waste before it even reaches the market? This is leading to economic hardship for farmers and food insecurity for millions of people around the world. A major issue in many countries is the lack of accessible cold storage. But solutions are tackling this: entrepreneurs and cooling companies are coming together to establish decentralised cold rooms using a servitisation (Cooling-as-a-Service) business model, allowing farmers to store their products on a pay-per-use basis. Combining this approach with digital tools can extend the shelf life of fresh produce and enable better decision-making and market linkages.

A significant challenge remains to scale and accelerate these solutions: cooling companies often require additional financing to support and expand their operations. This challenge is faced especially by less established businesses who must demonstrate their creditworthiness to potential investors.

To bridge this financing gap in the agricultural cooling landscape, we are hosting a three-part webinar series dedicated to understanding and addressing the financing gap. The sessions focus on exploring the existing financing landscape, understanding different finance and cooling company perspectives, and enabling dialogue between financiers, cooling companies and the research community.

Here is an overview of the 3 sessions:

Webinar 1 – 08/11: 14:00-15:00 CET

Cold Storage Financing in Agriculture: Where are we now and where do we want to go?

The first instalment of our webinar series provides a comprehensive overview of multi-dimensional impacts, barriers, business models, instruments and tools relevant to scaling agricultural cold storage. The session will explore in particular the financial landscape for cold rooms offered with ‘Cooling as a Service’ (CaaS). Our expert speakers will walk you through various ways to unlock finance, discovering key financial instruments, what matters to investors and challenges faced by companies to meet investment criteria.

Speakers:

Ben Hartley, Programme Manager of the Cooling for All programme at SEforALL
Sabine Desczka, Senior Coordinating Researcher for Impact Investment at Wageningen Economic Research
Harsha Vishnumolakala, Analyst at the Climate Policy Initiative
Bas Hetterscheid, operations and supply chain management specialist at Wageningen University
Celina Schelle (Moderator), Climate Finance Specialist at BASE

You can watch the recording of the session here:

You can now access the panelist presentations and the audience Q&A:

Webinar 2 – 15/11: 14:00-15:30 CET

Unlocking Finance for Cold Rooms and Cooling as a Service: Insights and Strategies from the Field and Finance

In this second webinar of the series you will gain insights from financiers on the criteria that cooling companies must meet when securing funding, as well as a better understanding of financier expectations and practical solutions for financing cold storage. Cooling companies will share their fundraising experiences and current challenges. The expert panel of financiers will discuss existing information gaps that can hinder funding, along with practical solutions. The webinar further explores how digital technology enhances the value proposition for financiers and emphasises the pivotal role of data in demonstrating creditworthiness and highlighting social and environmental sustainability to potential funders.

Speakers:

Divya Balakrishnan, Senior Advisor at GET.Invest
Zach Bloomfield, Finance Catalyst Advisor at GET.invest
Mathias Charles Yabe, CEO of AkoFresh
Paul Van Der Linden, CEO of Enviu and SokoFresh Co-Founder
Chinua Azubike, Managing Director at Infracredit
Roberta Evangelista, Senior Digitalisation Specialist at BASE Foundation
Emma Wink (Moderator), SET Alliance Project Lead at BASE Foundation

Webinar 3 – 22/11; 14.00-15:30 CET

Link, Learn, Lead: Connecting Financiers and Cooling Companies to scale decentralised off-grid agricultural cold storage

In the final session of the series, we bring together researchers, cooling companies, and financiers through an interactive online format that provides opportunities for knowledge sharing, connecting dots, and identifying concrete pathways to financing cold storage with a focus on Cooling as a Service as a promising business model. Key questions, challenges and lessons learned from the previous sessions will inform the discussion with the goal of identifying concrete approaches and pathways for companies and investors to scale decentralised off-grid cold storage.

Speakers:

Ben Hartley, Programme Manager of the Cooling for All programme at SEforALL
Sabine Desczka, Senior Coordinating Researcher for Impact Investment at Wageningen Economic Research
Zach Bloomfield, Finance Catalyst Advisor at GET.invest
Bas Hetterscheid, operations and supply chain management specialist at Wageningen University
John Paul Moscarella, Managing Director at Sustana Cooling Impact Fund

Unlocking finance for Cold Rooms as a Service: Outcomes and Needs

During the final session of the webinar series experts from research, financial institutions & advisory and policy came together with cooling companies, Associations and NGOs working in the field of cold chains with the goal of making cooling broadly accessible. The discussions were structured around central topics related to financing and scaling Cold Rooms as a Service businesses identified to be of major interest to the audience during the first two webinars. From the discussions, the following areas for action and future efforts to unlock financing and scaling were derived:

Financial Instruments:

Understanding by cooling companies of the financiers expectations Accessible Explanation of different financial instruments relevant for cold room businesses, i.e. via the creation of a database.
Further understanding and knowledge of digital tools which can be used by cooling companies that can support investor due diligence processes
Mapping of impact funds interested in Agro-business

Factors influencing commercial viability & role for financing:

Sharing best practices and guidance on developing a clear value proposition and assessing readiness to pay for cold storage (to avoid reliance on grants)
Creation of a common understanding of key principles for ensuring commercial viability
Exploring how to measure the residual value of cold rooms and showcasing best practices on the reuse of cold rooms.
Best practices and knowledge sharing around the relation between crop selection and commercial viability of the business – for example the perishability of crop type affects cooling demand (crops with low perishability and value may be less viable)
Provision of educational programmes for farmers and companies on the profitability of cold storage by crop type
Complementing cooling company’s engagement work with programmes that target gender-related differences in access to cold storage and markets, and empower female actors in this space

Multi-dimensional impacts of cold storage & pathways to climate finance:

Development of guidelines and standardised KPIs to assess cooling company readiness to scale, including early-stage companies.
Information on schemes for companies to receive financial and non-financial support
Need for policy advocacy to enable and strengthen data availability
Support/enhance the collection of more BANKable data to demonstrate commercial viability, impact and more mature risk assessment to investors via digital tools (i.e. impact dashboard)