Infrastructure investors in Australia are increasingly looking at ‘core-plus’ infrastructure investment strategies across their portfolios, giving rise to a new term ’infra-lated’. These strategies target broader asset classes, such as data centres and land titles registries, driven by a diminishing availability of large-scale traditional infrastructure assets.
Asset owners are gaining confidence in their existing investments and recognise the need to shift up the risk curve to find opportunities to deploy capital. This acceptance of an alternative risk profile is driving new opportunities, particularly with regards to stretching beyond traditional availability-based private-public partnerships and into other greenfield investments across multiple sectors.
New technologies like electric vehicles and blockchain are giving rise to the adoption of core-plus strategies, where investors anticipate a better return on a risk-weighted basis by unlocking upside across the value chain. Recently, the Port of Brisbane unveiled a new system to link supply chain information through blockchain technology to increase efficiency.
“Value creation approaches, their maturity and effectiveness vary across asset classes,” says Jason Fonti, GHD Advisory Origination and Value Chain Leader. “However there is a real opportunity to leverage technology and data to create operational value, especially when matched with a strategy for workforce culture change management and strong corporate governance”.
Environment, social and governance factors are also emerging as real drivers for creating operational value and encouragingly, forming a critical piece of the investment case. Ultimately it’s about making sure the objectives of value creation are aligned with the investors’ strategy, be it long-hold or short exit.
GHD Advisory works with clients to identify opportunities to deploy capital in “off market” opportunities, where GHD has deep commercial and technical experience.
Our approach leverages our substantial transactions experience and connected global network of more than 10,000 professionals who are at the forefront of the design, development and operation of infrastructure assets globally. This breadth of coverage coupled with our proven technical and commercial teams will allow GHD to identify potential target investment opportunities that suit your investment mandate (geography, market sector, investment size) and risk appetite.