KKR has agreed to purchase ProTen, one of Australia’s largest agricultural infrastructure businesses, thereby diversifying its regional fund’s portfolio beyond digital infrastructure, energy transition and transport & logistics.
The seller is Australia’s A$190-billion ($125 billion) superannuation fund Aware Super, which has owned the poultry business for seven years, according to a statement by KKR on Wednesday.
ProTen develops, owns, and operates farm infrastructure for Australia’s poultry supply chain. Founded in 2001, it now manages over 700 chicken sheds across over 60 farms in key agricultural regions of Australia. The transaction is expected to close later this year, subject to regulatory approvals.
KKR is making the investment from its second pan-Asia infrastructure fund, which closed at $6.4 billion last year, making it the largest fund of its kind at the time. The acquisition of ProTen stands out as one of the more unique deals within the fund’s portfolio, which has otherwise focused on more traditional private infrastructure segments such as Queensland Airports, remote power producer Zenith Energy, electricity network operator Spark Infrastructure, and bus and coach operator Ritchies.
“Our investment in ProTen is a unique opportunity to acquire a high-quality agricultural infrastructure asset, supported by availability-based long-term contracts, that plays an essential role in the food supply chain. KKR has been actively monitoring the agricultural infrastructure space as a high-conviction thematic,” said KKR’s head of Australia & New Zealand infrastructure Andrew Jennings.
In 2024, telecom accounted for just under 60% of Asia-Pacific infrastructure deal value, making it the dominant sector for the year, while renewable energy emerged as the second largest, comprising roughly 20% of total deal value, per Preqin data.
KKR’s APAC infrastructure strategy has been one of the busiest across the region in the past twelve months. Besides buying fresh secondaries in Zenith from the likes of Pacific Equity Partners in June, the Wall Street behemoth in the same month announced that British Columbia Investment Management Corporation had agreed to buy minority shares in Pinnacle, a Filipino telecom tower operator that the firm invested in from its first and second fund in the same franchise.
The firm was also reportedly raising the successor fund with a targeted corpus exceeding $9 billion that would make it the biggest Asia fund for the strategy. The infrastructure strategy is among those that is set to come to the fundraising market within the next 12-18 months, including its next funds for flagship Asia private equity, Asia private credit, and Asia leveraged credit, per an investor presentation in May.
