Pre-investment Technical Assistance by LDN TAF
Country:
Ghana
Sector:
Agroforestry based tropical almond and fonio
Business model
Talmond Ltd. was registered in Ghana in 2019. The products currently include tropical almond milk, tropical almond kernels, and tropical almond flour. Talmond have established sourcing activity of tropical almonds from communities across Ghana that have existing tropical almond trees. These communities are involved in the collection and drying of the tropical almond fruits. The company then receives, de-shell and process the kernels into commercialised products in their own production facility.
The main purpose of Talmond’s business is to create food systems that are resilient by diversifying the plants we eat. They use water- and climate-resilient crops, with focus on the neglected and underutilised tropical almond, to promote biodiversity, sustainable agroforestry, smallholder farmer inclusion and food security and sovereignty in Ghana.
Talmond aims to plant 58.000 TAL trees on app. 470 ha of degraded land in the context of their nucleus farm and smallholder outgrower farm ambitions. For that, Talmond aims to work with around 1.000 smallholder farmers (cocoa famers, subsistence farmers, gold mining smallholders) with in total app. 400ha of land to plant TAL trees in addition to other intercrops such as cocoa, coffee and moringa. Their operations will create app. 2.000 jobs of which a large percentage for women and youth. Through their collection program they aim to engage with more than 22 communities.
Investment need
Talmond is currently looking to secure 1M funding (capex for nucleus farm establishment and factory set-up, working capital and operational activities). As such the investment is too small for the LDN Fund but the TA support will enable Talmond to extend their investment proposition to include expansion of their agroforestry nucleus farm and their outgrower ambitions.
Furthermore, the investment opportunity is likely to grow as Talmond is looking to set-up a production space in Ghana that is suited to receiving and processing large volumes of TAL that undergo the steps of de-shelling, pasteurisation and transformation into tropical almond paste, flour and snacks.
Mirova is looking to engage with Talmond already at this stage to explore a potential fit of the current investment needs with other funds under management (e.g. Nature+).
Technical assistance
The LDN TAF supports Talmond with establishment of out-grower and collector communities business model and extension services, proof of concept of optimal tropical almond agroforestry cultivation on degraded soil, impact assessment and gender analysis and development of an ambitious gender equality strategy.
Technical assistance support from the LDN TAF does not constitute a commitment from the LDN Fund, or Mirova, to finance directly or indirectly the project described above. Any such commitment shall be subject to inter alia, a detailed technical, financial and legal due diligence of the company and the project, as well as all required LDN Fund investment committee approvals and satisfactory documentation.
