Origin Capital Partners

Origin Capital Partners

Origin Capital Partners launched in 2020 as a specialist funds manager built on the founders' decades of leadership experience inside New Zealand's kiwifruit value chain. The firm is headquartered in Tauranga, the heart of the Bay of Plenty growing region, and invests exclusively in land-backed SunGold kiwifruit assets alongside the Zespri cooperative structure. Its first two closed-end funds, Origin Capital Fund 1 and Origin Capital Fund 2, raised capital from 260 wholesale investors to acquire 17 orchards spanning Bay of Plenty, Gisborne and Kerikeri — totalling 160 canopy hectares, with some hectares still under development. The strategy concentrates on direct asset ownership: land, vines, and the associated Zespri shares that regulate export rights. The portfolio's metrics disclose approximately $240 million in combined assets, 2.2 million trays of estimated 2026 supply, and a stake ranking as the third-largest Zespri shareholding globally. Geographic exposure runs across New Zealand's North Island, with orchards that diversify climate risk between northern Kerikeri, central Bay of Plenty, and eastern Gisborne. The firm does not invest outside food and fibre, nor does it pursue minority stakes in operating companies beyond the kiwifruit land-and-shares bundle. The initial two funds deployed capital raised starting in 2021. By April 2026 the firm was actively marketing Origin Capital Kiwifruit Fund 3 to wholesale investors, seeking to replicate the land-acquisition-and-development model with the same management team. The firm does not publicly disclose total AUM or team headcount, but the founder group — Dominic Jones, Lain Jager, Craig Greenlees, Paul Jones — remains the named decision-making core, drawing on family and network relationships built across decades of kiwifruit industry participation. Origin's structural distinction is its extreme asset-class and geography concentration inside a regulated agricultural export monopoly. Unlike diversified agri-funds, Origin is a pure-play vehicle for SunGold kiwifruit, where returns are a function of Zespri share allocations, orchard productivity, and land appreciation — all managed by the same cooperative ecosystem the founders help govern.