Greetings Agents of Impact! Our monthly newsletter, ImpactAlpha Latin America, drops today. Opt-in to receive ImpactAlpha Latin America as part of your subscription.
In today’s Brief:
- Nearshoring the cassava supply chain
- Seaweed-based packaging in Mexico
- Community real estate ownership in California
- Small businesses as leaders for global climate action
Featured: Farmer Finance
Building a supply chain and boosting farmers’ incomes in Nicaragua. Amid Covid’s disruption to global supply chains, an agriprocessing company in Nicaragua seized a high-value opportunity to build a sustainable business around a home-grown crop. Alcasa, short for Almidones de Centroamérica, has expanded to help Nicaragua’s smallholder farmers boost their incomes and weather climate shocks. Alcasa is leveraging corporate contracts, off-take agreements and low-cost financing to build a domestic production market for cassava, a starch used in everything from sauces to processed meats to industrial adhesives. Cassava demand is high: Alcasa’s corporate buyers are major food companies like Cargill and Ingredion, as well as regional players like Sigma Alimentos, all of which otherwise depend on imports from Asia. Despite a struggling economy and an increasingly isolated government, Nicaragua grows more cassava starch than any other country in Central and North America. “Cassava lets us work with small farmers because you can do it on one acre,” says Alcasa’s Raúl Amador Somarriba. “That’s what makes the impact possible.”
- Offtake contracts. Alcasa was founded in 2012 with backing from Grupo Invercasa to build Nicaragua’s first industrial-scale cassava processing facility. Cassava has an extremely short shelf-life when harvested, so processing must begin almost immediately. Alcasa cuts out middlemen and acts as a primary financier and buyer for about 350 farmers. It signs off-take contracts before planting begins and provides low-interest loans so farmers can buy the inputs they need. At harvest time, Alcasa arrives to weigh the crops; it pays farmers based on starch content. Alcasa says its support has helped double yields per acre. “You’re talking about a family that was living off $30 a month [now earning] $300, $400,” says Amador Somarriba. “That literally takes you out of the poverty line.”
- Valuable crop. Grupo Invercasa, a financial services provider, holds at least seven other companies in addition to Alcasa. The group initially worked in Nicaragua’s coffee industry, before concluding that export margins were too thin to deliver meaningful improvements in farmer livelihoods. In contrast, cassava production is so lucrative that some of Alcasa’s technical staff have left the company to become farmers. The operation supports 250 direct jobs and more than 1,100 indirect jobs. Women make up 42% of the workforce. Instead of paying dividends, Alcasa reinvests profits to expand its farmer network and processing capacity. “Whatever we get into, we have to add value,” Amador Somarriba says. “If we can’t do that, there’s no purpose. We won’t be able to transfer value to our producers.”
- Keep reading, “Building a supply chain and boosting farmers’ incomes in Nicaragua,” by Erik Stein.
Dealflow: Invasive to Innovative
Epic Angels network invests in BioPlaster to turn seaweed into packaging. Epic Angels, a 750-member network of female angel investors, closed its first deal in Mexico: a pre-seed investment in BioPlaster Research, a Yucatán-based startup that turns sargassum, the brown seaweed piling up on Caribbean coastlines, into biodegradable packaging materials. BioPlaster has secured letters of intent from IKEA suppliers, Great Packaging, Refurbi and other buyers eager for biodegradable packaging. “We intend to revolutionize the plastics industry,” BioPlaster’s Andrea Bonilla told ImpactAlpha last year. The company sources 100,000 pounds of the brown algae each year through The Seas We Love, a Mexican nonprofit that removes sargassum from beaches around the Yucatán peninsula. The BioPlaster financing round also included Zenani Capital, GridX, Amplifica Capital and Zero by Fifty. BioPlaster will use its first outside capital to fund a new facility, expand commercial production efforts and conduct research and development.
- Female angels. Epic Angels launched four years ago in Singapore after founder Maaike Doyer noticed the absence of women in the region’s angel investor landscape. Many wealthy women kept their savings in low-yield bank accounts while their male peers participated in venture deals. “There’s this untapped capital that is just sitting in a bank account, doing absolutely nothing,” she told ImpactAlpha. That idle cash, she says, “is what I’m really excited about to bring into the markets.” The group looks for strong early-stage businesses tackling global challenges, from fintech to circular economy solutions. It has grown to nearly 1,000 members globally and is expanding in Latin America, following Doyer’s move to the region.
- More.
Community Vision lands $5 million from the Packard Foundation for community ownership in California. Community Vision CA’s $130 million loan fund was originally launched as the Northern California Community Loan Fund by community leaders who wanted to finance nonprofits and social enterprises in California’s low-income, underserved communities. The Packard Foundation’s $5 million debt investment came through its $250 million mission investing strategy. The investment from Packard “will expand the flexible capital Community Vision deploys to help mission-driven organizations purchase, preserve, and develop the community assets that make California’s neighborhoods thrive,” Community Vision’s Catherine Howard told ImpactAlpha. Packard’s Madeline Wu said the loans will help build “a stronger California where more families can afford stable housing.”
- Investing in health. Howard told ImpactAlpha a year ago that community real estate ownership is an anti-gentrification tool that builds political and financial power. The CDFI has deployed $50.6 million across 18 loans this year. The deals include $7.2 million in pre-development financing for three new Camarena Health facilities in Madera County, a “medical desert,” to provide medical, dental, behavioral health, pediatric and senior care to roughly 17,000 local patients, a majority of whom are low income. Community Vision’s 2025 portfolio also includes loans to small businesses, affordable housing developers and education providers.
- More.
Investisseurs & Partenaires raises $48 million to expand access to climate-smart goods and services. Paris-based Investisseurs & Partenaires has secured €41 million ($47.6 million) in the first close of its third I&P Afrique Entrepreneurs fund, or IPAE 3. The fund blends several levels of debt with technical assistance. Repeat investors include European Investment Bank, Bpifrance and the West African Development Bank. Proparco’s FISEA initiative, which backs West African small businesses directly and via funds, provided a €7 million catalytic junior tranche to enhance the fund’s risk-return profile. The French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs and the European Union via FISEA will provide €1.2 million for technical support.
Dealflow overflow. Investment news crossing our desks:
- The Global Center for Maritime Decarbonization’s Fund for Energy Efficiency Technologies secured $35 million to offer upfront financing for vessel retrofits. The fund is managed by Singapore-based AIM Horizon Investments. (GCMD)
- Female Founders Fund raised $29 million from Pivotal Ventures, Ingeborg Investments and the Anne Wojcicki Foundation for its fourth fund for seed-stage, female-founded companies. (FFF)
- Japan’s Chiyoda Corp. and the Development Bank of Japan invested in San Francisco-based Heirloom for low-cost direct air carbon capture. (Heirloom)
Impact Voices: Climate Finance
How finance and policy can empower small businesses to lead on global climate action. Small businesses in emerging markets are highly vulnerable to climate change. They’re also leading on climate action. Across the Global South, small businesses are restoring forests, producing clean energy, advancing circular agriculture, and building resilient local economies – “yet they are left out of accessing the capital needed to scale their operations to have the most impact,” said Climate Finance Fund’s Marilyn Waite (for background see, “Global Climate Finance Forum seeks to mobilize capital for locally-led solutions in the Global South”). In a guest post on ImpactAlpha, Waite’s colleague Meghna Parameswaran recaps a discussion at last month’s COP30 climate summit in Brazil exploring ways to improve capital flows and technical assistance for small businesses and elevate their role in states’ nationally determined contributions, or NDCs, for climate action.
- Practical resources. The SME Climate Hub, for example, aims to be a “one-stop shop” for small businesses trying to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions. The ITC Deforestation-Free Trade Gateway is a digital resource for data collection and deforestation risk analysis. “The final Belém package did not codify small businesses as distinct stakeholders in NDCs but did highlight their role in climate action,” Parameswaran writes. “Scaling solutions across the Global South depends on aligning language, mindsets and frameworks among all stakeholders to reflect small businesses as builders of credible, investable solutions.”
- Go deeper.
Agents of Impact: Follow the Talent
IMPACT Community Capital appoints Michael Lohmeier as CEO, replacing Jeff Brenner, who is retiring at the end of this year… Green Impact Exchange welcomes Marie Mähl, previously with ESG Book, as chief product officer and executive vice president… European Women in VC adds Kärt Klein, previously with the European Business Angel Network, as chief operating officer.
The Minneapolis Foundation appoints Nathan Wade, former investment officer at the McKnight Foundation, a chief investment officer… Adam Smith joins Zeal Capital Partners as a full-time investment associate… Closed Loop Partners is hiring a fund accounting analyst in New York… BFA Global seeks a senior director of global advisory and partnerships.
👉 View (or post) impact investing jobs on ImpactAlpha’s Career Hub.
Thank you for your impact!
– Dec. 4, 2025
