Family office of Henderson Land boss to fast-track Central Asia green energy plans

Managing partner of Peter Lee’s family office says firm is pressing ahead with investment projects such as sustainable aviation fuel Full Vision’s senior management has made repeated trips to Astana since the Hong Kong government’s delegation visited Central Asia. Photo: Reuters Henderson Land Development co-chairman and managing director Peter Lee Ka-kit’s family office has fast-tracked its plans in Central Asia, where rich agricultural and natural resources could trigger more than US$1 billion in investments in green energy. Alan Chan Ying-lung, managing partner of family office Full Vision Capital, told the South China Morning Post that the firm was pressing ahead with investment projects such as sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and smart energy storage and related solutions in Kazakhstan’s capital, Astana. He said trial runs using agricultural waste as feedstock for biofuel were under way, pending the finalisation of agreements that would ultimately involve investments of more than US$1 billion. Full Vision looks set to be among the first wave of Hong Kong investors parking investments in the Central Asian country, less than two months after Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu led the city’s first-ever trade delegation to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan to explore opportunities. “We just started the negotiation not long ago, but the progress has gone so fast that it surprised me,” Chan said on the sidelines of the inaugural Nusa Dua Forum, organised by the SCMP and Indonesian sovereign fund Danantara, on Friday last week. At the forum in Bali, he revealed that Full Vision’s senior management had made repeated trips to Astana since Peter Lee joined the government’s delegation for the Uzbekistan leg of the trip in early June. As recently as this week, Lee was leading negotiations in Astana, Chan said. “We are aware of the market, but the [city leader’s] trip has accelerated the whole development,” he said. “We have already recently met with Kazakhstan’s deputy prime minister for talks on SAF and other projects.” Alan Chan, managing partner of Full Vision Capital, at the Nusa Dua Forum in Bali. Photo: Nora Tam Set up in 2014, Full Vision has a motto of “do well by doing good”, and incubates smart energy solutions and environmental technologies that promote sustainability. It has since founded three start-ups: EcoCeres, which produces SAF; EnerVenue, which makes rechargeable batteries; and Luquos Energy, which offers energy storage services. Chan saw investment potential for all three projects in Kazakhstan. “Astana is like the second Dubai, but in Central Asia, serving as an interchange between Europe and Asia. And Astana is a safe place,” he said. Chan said he considered the city to have strong potential and believed Central Asia was like a blank sheet of paper – “a lot can be built on it”. Unhandled type: inline-plus-widget {"type":"inline-plus-widget"} He noted that Kazakhstan was a top exporter of agricultural products such as grains and sunflower oil and had high levels of meat consumption, meaning the country produced ample agricultural waste and animal fat as by-products. He said Full Vision was targeting this agricultural waste and animal fat as feedstock for EcoCeres’ production of sustainable aviation fuel. The company is the world’s second-biggest producer of such fuel in terms of output, after Finland’s Neste. Chan said one reason the company was fast-tracking investment plans was that agricultural harvests would be completed before winter. Otherwise, the plans would have to wait for the next harvest, which would be a year later, he added. He said Hong Kong’s status as a global finance centre had a role to play in Central Asia by serving as a fundraising platform for these companies. “Astana’s financial system isn’t as mature as Hong Kong’s, relatively. It needs to connect to Hong Kong for fundraising capacity,” he said. He also pointed out that Kazakhstan was situated along the trade corridor of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative and required modern chemical refining technologies.