Notes on real-asset investing, due diligence and deal structuring in South Africa — written by our co-founders SP van der Walt and Morne Pienaar.
Land, mining, agriculture and energy assets behave differently to listed equities — and that difference is the point.
Smaller deals are not less important — they simply need a different kind of support than a credible gateway can responsibly give at scale.
More real-asset transactions collapse over unclear title and authority than over price. Here's why that question always comes first.
Funders fear what they can't independently verify. Closing that gap is the real work in resource project finance.
Combining productive agriculture with on-site energy generation is changing the economics of both sectors.
A due diligence process that produces a tick-box report has already failed at its actual purpose.
An investor-ready IM is not a sales brochure. It is a structured argument that anticipates the questions a funder will ask.
The gap between a real opportunity and a fundable one is wider than most sponsors realise.
A risk register that lists nothing serious is not a clean project — it is an incomplete one.
Africa's growing trade volumes are creating sustained demand for warehousing, distribution and industrial land — often faster than supply can respond.
Infrastructure assets need patient, structured capital — and the structure matters as much as the amount.
Confirming who can actually sign for a transaction sounds like the easiest step in due diligence. It is also the one most often skipped.
Real ESG value shows up in operational decisions, not in the language of a pitch deck.
Africa is not short of capital looking for a home. It is short of credible ways for that capital to find the right project.
Resource project valuations are only as good as the assumptions buried inside them — and those assumptions are easy to get wrong, by accident or otherwise.
A term sheet is not the deal. Treating every clause as final, or every clause as negotiable, are both mistakes.
Capital moving across African borders into real assets faces a particular set of frictions — and a particular set of opportunities for those who manage them well.
A gateway is not a broker, not an advisor, and not a fund. Understanding what it actually does clarifies what it can responsibly promise.
Before a funder commits real diligence resources, they are looking for a small set of signals that the opportunity is worth that commitment.
The size of a deal pipeline says very little about its quality. Credibility, not volume, is what funders actually value.
Retail property doesn't get the attention mining or logistics land does — but well-located, well-tenanted retail real estate remains one of the more dependable real-asset categories.
Schools, training facilities and campuses are real, income-generating infrastructure — and South Africa's growing demand for quality education capacity makes this a category worth serious attention.
An asset with people already working on it carries labour law exposure that purely commercial due diligence routinely misses — until it becomes the funder's problem.
A non-disclosure agreement that's signed without thought is barely worth the page it's printed on. Done properly, it's the document that makes the rest of the deal possible.
Quality and safety certifications are often listed as a footnote in a pitch deck. Read properly, they tell you a great deal about how disciplined an operation really is.
Confirming that the person in front of you can actually sign is a legal exercise with specific, well-established rules — not a courtesy question to ask once and move on from.
Most agreements are drafted for the version of the deal where everything goes to plan. The ones worth having are drafted for the version where it doesn't.
Let's talk about whether it fits the kind of opportunity we screen for.