Five years after launching a business that gives private wealth investors access to global private equity via single-asset continuation vehicles (CVs), Pacific Equity Partners (PEP) has led one of these deals in its home market. Paul Ryan, a managing director at PEP Gateway, observed that it’s not a one-off.

“As we’ve grown, we’ve continued to write ever larger tickets. On a global stage, we can write up to USD 60m for a single-asset CV, which is a multiple of where we were when we started this journey,” he told AVCJ. “At the same time, we thought it made a lot of sense, given Australia and New Zealand is our backyard, to look at leading transactions here. It’s a natural extension.”

PEP Gateway has backed a CV raised by Navis Capital Partners for Mainland Poultry, New Zealand’s largest supplier of eggs. Navis acquired a majority stake in 2017 at an enterprise valuation of approximately NZD 300m (USD 178m) via its seventh fund, which closed on USD 1.5bn two years earlier.

The valuation is roughly the same for the latest deal. While the size of the CV has not been disclosed, PEP Gateway’s equity cheque exceeds the USD 60m maximum when operating offshore. Ryan noted that the firm can draw on additional pools of capital for opportunities in Australia and New Zealand, so the commitment is “commensurate with what you see other leads writing in the marketplace.”

Luminis Partners advised on the transaction, having first been appointed to run a sale process in September 2023. Mergermarket subsequently reported that Navis had received inbound enquiries from European strategic investors.

Global to local

Mainland Poultry sits in a portfolio alongside a collection of predominantly North America and Europe-based CVs in which PEP Gateway acts as a supporting investor. As of March, the largest positions were security systems integrator Convergint (managed by Leonard Green & Partners), consumer healthcare business Stada (Capvest), and insurance broker Hub International (Hellman & Friedman).

The portfolio also includes Up Education, an education provider under PEP’s private equity business that was transferred into a CV in 2023. AlpInvest Partners led that transaction.

PEP Gateway has participated in nearly 50 CVs since launch and its assets under management (AUM) recently hit AUD 1bn (USD 716m). Most of this is held in an open-ended evergreen fund that allows monthly redemptions and the rest in a couple of traditional closed-ended funds. According to Ryan, the annual net return over the last three years has been 15%, which is in line with targets.

Mainland Poultry is not the first CV targeted by PEP Gateway as a lead investor – the firm has participated in a couple of other processes, having decided to expand the scope of its coverage over 12 months ago – but it is a good fit. The company is a dominant player in New Zealand egg production across free range, barn, and colony formats, accounting for nearly 40% of national supply.

“At the core, it’s a high-quality business, it has a non-discretionary demand profile, and it happens to be on the right side of some macro trends towards healthier diets. It’s also a market-leading business, and one that has seen a lot of investment in new free-range and barn capacity,” said James Randall, a director at PEP Gateway. “We thought it was well set-up for the next period of growth.”

PEP’s private equity team has prior experience in New Zealand’s poultry industry, having owned chicken producer Tegel Foods from 2005 through 2010, while the firm’s secure assets strategy still holds Agright, a poultry farm operator in Australia and New Zealand. PEP Gateway expects to tap this institutional knowledge of the space as well as the wider firm’s network of management talent.

Mainland Poultry reported revenue of NZD 244.3m and net profit of NZD 11.3m for the 12 months ended March 2025, down from NZD 258.3m and NZD 23.5m a year earlier, regulatory filings show. However, the company has exhibited generally steady growth during the Navis holding period to date – revenue was NZD 174.7m in 2019 – even as it navigated a series of losses in and around COVID-19.

Asked about specific plans for the duration of the CV, Randall added: “This business has been the largest investor in production over the last decade, and you will see that continue.”

Keen for more

AVCJ Research has records of approximately 20 single-asset CVs closing in Asia since 2018, and half of them involve Australia and New Zealand-based companies. Mainland Poultry is the second of 2026, following a USD 255m transaction involving Pemba Capital Partners-owned Vets Central. TPG NewQuest served as anchor investor, marking its Australia debut.

“The North America and European markets are still further ahead, but the appetite among GPs in Australia and New Zealand to do CVs and the capital formation and interest from global investors has increased. Based on the names we hear about, there’s a lot more investor interest than when PEP ran the process for Up Education,” said Ryan.

“We think activity will continue to pick up over the coming years, and it’s an area where we want to do more.”