Top 3 SPAC Targets – Agriculture

After a quiet stretch in the SPAC market, we pressed pause on this column. But with deal flow picking up, targets getting more creative, and sponsors back in hunting mode, it’s the right time to bring back one of our favorites: the Top 3 SPAC Targets. Read on to see who we picked for private targets in the agriculture industry.

It remains unclear how long Middle East instability and continued inflation concerns will keep the market in a risk-off mood. But, SPACs have a chance to keep their options open and maintain one eye on old-school plays in agriculture.

The current moment is also an intriguing chance to look at different strategies with a sudden lifting of most of the Trump administration’s “national emergency” tariffs by the Supreme Court last month. On one hand, this makes the produce of some of the most heavily tariffed nations look newly attractive.

On the other hand, the fact that these tariffs were enacted at all and remained in place for nearly a year point to the possibility of a new reality with shifting trade barriers that may rise and fall unpredictably. In such a circumstance, agricultural plays that are diversified across multiple geographies and growth markets may be prove the most resilient and attractive for investment over the medium term.

The status quo also includes broader trends towards countries working to maintain more resilient internal food security in the face of changing climates and periodic supply chain shocks. Below are some potential approaches for SPACs to merge with targets exemplifying each of these strategies.

Costa Group

Australia’s Costa Group has been pursuing the geographical diversification approach since before tariffs began looming as a moving target to strategize around.

The group was originally founded in 1895, but it has grown far beyond its legacy farms down under to now include plots of avocadoes, bananas, citrus, grapes, mushrooms, and tomatoes across Australia’s five major provinces. Internationally, it now also cultivates substrate berries from about 900 hectares (2,224 acres) in China, Morocco and Laos.

To propel that international expansion forward even further, private equity firm Paine Schwartz Partners took the formerly ASX-listed firm private in early 2024 at a $963 million valuation in a consortium with global berry-farming giant Driscoll’s and British Columbia Investment Management.

Before that acquisition, Costa was remarkably profitable by the frequently thin-margined standards of the agriculture space. This is likely in large part due to its focus on higher-value produce that have a great deal of climate-specificity.

In its last public earnings report before the take-private, it reported that it generated A$150 million ($105 million) in EBITDA from A$770 million ($538 million) in revenue during the first half of 2023. That 19% EBITDA margin would be attractive in a wide variety of industries.

Moving forward, the company’s diverse geographical footprint could come in handy, particularly in having a toehold in the Chinese market where demand for higher-quality and pricier food items is rapidly growing. And, although its current backers are only two years into their own value-add strategy, a move that would give it more capital to deploy and a more liquid public market than it had previously been exposed to could be hard to pass up.

Amber Wave

Closer to home, both this current administration and the financial world have increasingly looked at American production of food and other resources in national security terms. So, the more sensitive resources a target is producing on American soil the better.

That puts Kansas-based Amber Wave in an intriguing position. It was originally founded as a fuel corn ethanol producer, which had been in operation since 2006.

In 2021, Summit Agriculture Group acquired the company with the idea of investing $200 million to transition its fuel production to source from more locally available wheat starch, while also building a wheat proteins production facility on the same site. This would serve food ingredients products to clients in the baked goods, pet food and livestock feed markets.

Today, Amber Wave produces 50 million gallons of wheat-based ethanol annually, worth about $90 million at current wholesale prices, and it is also now the largest North American supplier of wheat gluten. This still leaves plenty of room for expansion, as the US still imports about 80% of its total wheat gluten and demand for cleaner domestic fuel sources remains high, especially at a time of geopolitical price shocks.

With the company’s private equity owner coming up on the five-year anniversary of its initial investment, a SPAC deal could allow retail investors to get behind a domestic import-replacement story of a kind that both political parties have typically supported legislatively.

Better Beef

But, if you’re wondering “Where’s the beef?” The correct answer is increasingly: Brazil.

The South American country surpassed the US in beef production last year shipping $17 billion worth of the meat in 2025, which may have been part of why it found itself in the crosshairs of Trump’s tariffs in the first place.

Breaking into this lucrative Brazilian beef market can be difficult, however, because the three largest players – JBS, Marfrig and Minerva – make up about two-thirds of the country’s production. Their success is instructive for what would be possible should SPAC financiers look to back a fourth player in the market.

A recent investor presentation by Minerva shows that Brazil’s beef export prices as of 2024 were roughly half that of the average US exports and Brazilian beef products already make up about half of China’s imports. As such, Brazilian beef is positioned to be competitive on the global stage even without the US market. But, adding the fact that the 40% tariff imposed by the Trump administration has now been lifted, the industry could have new wind at its back.

Better Beef is estimated by NeoKing Foods to be roughly the fifth-largest player in the Brazilian meat industry and the largest beef producer outside of the top three. Although it has not shared financials publicly, it has scaled up to about 2,000 employees and exports to 15 countries.

By employee headcount, this makes Better Beef roughly 1/10 the size of Minerva, which generated about R$51 billion ($9.7 billion) in revenue over its past 12 reported months and R$4.7 billion ($896 million) in EBITDA for a 9% margin.

Assuming some operational similarities between Better Beef and Minerva, it could be generating revenues in the vicinity of $1 billion for about $90 million in EBITDA, which would make it a strong candidate for a SPAC transaction. Under normal circumstances, these figures would also make it a competitive traditional IPO candidate, but Brazil-based firms have struggled to capture the momentum necessary for a road show to a US exchange.

Several SPACs have filed for IPOs over the past year with an expressed interest in forging a deal with a Latin American target. TRG Latin America (NASDAQ:TRGSU) hit the market just last week with the help of underwriter Santander to potentially find itself an opportunity much like this one.