Infrastructure Equity – Value-Add
Value-add infrastructure equity strategies pursue assets with untapped potential, often requiring active management, operational improvements, or capital expenditure to unlock value.
Asset Class Leaders
Why invest in Infrastructure Equity – Value-Add
What characterizes Infrastructure Equity – Value-Add?
- Industry / Sector: Value-Add focuses on assets that are not fully stabilized and require active ownership to create value, applying a private-equity style mindset. Typical sectors include renewables, storage, digital infrastructure (fiber, towers, data centers), and transport upgrades, with growing opportunities in circular economy, healthcare, and food infrastructure. Investments are often tied to megatrends such as decarbonization, digitalization, and urbanization.
- ESG: ESG is a core driver, as many projects directly support the energy transition, resource efficiency, and social infrastructure improvements. Investors look for opportunities to raise sustainability standards and governance while delivering measurable impact throughout the ownership period.
- Target Company Size: Primarily mid-market assets or platforms where hands-on management can unlock growth and efficiency. Examples include lower mid-market companies with EBITDA of around EUR 15–30 million, scalable platforms, or development pipelines that can be built out over time.
- Geography: Mainly focused on OECD markets such as Europe, North America, and Australia, where regulatory stability supports long-term investment. Selective exposure to emerging markets is possible when supported by favorable policy and governance conditions.
Manager Q&A
Question 1
How do you define ‘Value-Add’ infrastructure?
We define Value-Add infrastructure as investing in infrastructure assets with a private-equity value creation mindset. This means that we pursue an exit-driven investment approach, with typical hold periods of 5-7 years. As part of our value creation strategy, we pursue three distinct types of investments:
i. Buyout: We invest is lower mid-market, stable assets with an EBITDA of EUR 15-30m, pursuing an organic growth strategy.
ii. Buy-and-build: Platform investments with a M&A consolidation strategy
iii. Growth equity: Scale-up investment in small, negative cashflow assets whereby we contribute growth capital to scale up the underlying asset base and enable these businesses to reach critical scale to turn profitable.
As opposed to core or core+ investments, the focus is not on yield, but total return.
Question 2
What is driving the evolution of the opportunity set in 'Value-Add' Infrastructure?
The acceleration of existing socio-economic megatrends—such as decarbonization, sustainability, digitalization, new mobility, evolving logistics, circular economy, urbanization, and aging population are reshaping infrastructure needs and further expanding the Value-Add opportunity set.
Question 3
Where do you see the most compelling opportunities today?
We are seeing interesting niche opportunities in specialized equipment rental, circular economy solutions (e.g. advanced modular solutions) as well as healthcare related investments (such as emergency rescue business). More recently, we have identified food infrastructure as a new upcoming Value-Add infrastructure sector with very strong fundamental tailwind.
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