Roebuck Foods seeks €10m as it eyes up climate companies Glasport and Rumen Tech

London-listed Irish company Roebuck Foods is seeking to raise €10 million as it prepares to take over two companies focused on greenhouse gas emissions reduction. Roebuck, formerly part of cold storage group Norish, owns shares in two businesses whose products cut emissions from farm waste, Glasport and a connected company, Rumen Tech, and is seeking to buy majority holdings in both. The company is raising €10 million through placing and sale of shares at 9 pence sterling each through Irish broker J&E Davy .

Roebuck suspended trading in its stock on Tuesday as the process got under way, according to a company statement. Roebuck will use the cash to support the growth of Glasport, which is now valued at €25 million, and Rumen Tech, whose products are at an early stage of development. The Irish firm is listed on London’s Alternative Investment Market, meant to give smaller businesses still under development access to equity investors’ cash. It has appointed Justin McCarthy as chief executive; he holds the same post at Glasport and Rumen Tech.

He is a former chief executive of the Irish Farmers’ Journal group whose career spans State and private-sector agri-food organisations. He is an agricultural science graduate from Harper Adams University in Newport, England. Roebuck has appointed former ESB chief executive Padraic McManus as chairman of its board. He will take up the position on completion of the fundraising. McManus is a former chairman of telecoms company Eir and of the company that runs the Greenlink Interconnector, an electricity line linking Ireland and Britain.

The London-listed company owns 37.3 per cent of Galway-based Glasport, with an option to increase this to 82.3 per cent, which it can exercise up to February 2029. It owns 16 per cent of Rumen Tech and is in talks to buy the remaining 84 per cent. Glasport makes Gasabate, which cuts methane emissions from cattle manure by 80 per cent. Methane is a greenhouse gas. US patent authorities approved Gasabate last year. Europe’s biggest agricultural co-operative, Scandinavian group Arla, recently approved the product for inclusion in an incentive programme that rewards farmers for taking steps to protect the climate and environment.

Gasabate will become part of Arla’s FarmAhead scheme from next year, opening it up to customers in Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Luxembourg, Sweden, the Netherlands and the UK. These milestones have brought its agreed value to €25.08 million. Should it be included in a country’s greenhouse gas inventory calculation, that figure will increase to €30.08 million. Rumen Tech makes a feed additive that cuts carbon emissions from manure. That product is at an earlier stage of development.

Roebuck will pay for the remaining stakes in both companies with its own shares, according to a statement.