Resources, reimagined

Why the next supply of food, materials and resources will come from places the old economy overlooked, and why it is the thesis behind everything Paxtier does.

Dear readers,

For the last five years, Paxtier has worked where science, markets and capital meet in how the world produces food, materials and resources. We've advised governments, development banks, UN agencies, corporates, foundations and investors in more than 15 countries. We've designed loan programmes and helped run grant programmes, advised investment committees and run due diligence on some of the sector's largest operations. We've assessed species, sites and processing technologies, designed pilot farms, mapped buyers for producers and built sourcing strategies for multinationals. And we've interviewed many of the investors and founders building this space.

That work has taken us to farms, labs, processing plants, ministries and boardrooms, from East Africa and Southeast Asia to Europe, the Pacific and the Americas. It all points to one idea. It's the thesis behind everything Paxtier now does, and the focus of The Paxtier Report from here on: the companies, technology, science and markets reimagining how we source what we need.

The supply problem

The world needs more food, more materials and more of the resources a modern economy runs on. Most of today's supply chains were built for a different century. They lean on the same farmland, the same freshwater, the same mines and the same fossil inputs, and many of them are already stretched.

Most conversations about this start with demand: eat less, use less, waste less. All of that matters. But someone also has to build new supply.

Where the next supply comes from

The next supply will come from places the old economy overlooked:

Oceans and waterways: seaweed and algae for food, feed, fertiliser and materials; aquaculture that produces protein without new land.
Saline and marginal land: crops that grow where conventional farming can't, on degraded soils and coastlines.
Waste: value recovered from streams we used to throw away.
Biology: organisms and processes that make inputs we currently mine, drill or synthesise.

None of these is new on its own. What's new is that the science now works, investors are paying attention, and buyers are starting to look for alternatives. We call this resource innovation: building new sources of food, materials and resources from places the old economy wrote off.

It's one idea, but it connects markets that are usually discussed separately: seaweed biostimulants and blue carbon, salt-tolerant crops and novel ingredients, aquaculture and bio-based materials.

What the last cycle taught us

The last few years were humbling. Too much energy and capital spread across too many ideas at once. Some good companies ran out of runway. Close friends of mine shut down businesses they'd poured years into.

But the survivors taught the sector something. The companies still standing picked a lane, found a buyer early and built for the slow, capital-heavy reality of physical production. And the finance conversation has matured: from what to invest in to how, meaning which vehicles work for long-term, science-driven businesses and which don't.

In South Korea I saw what happens when a resource industry is done properly: generations of know-how, serious processing infrastructure, financing built for scale, and government, industry, researchers and farmers working in lockstep. That's the bar.

What we believe

Start from the market, not the technology. Most new technologies fail for lack of a buyer, not lack of science.
If nobody will pay for it, it isn't a solution yet.
The best insight comes from the field, not the desk.
Far more of what we eat and make will come from the sea and saline land than most people imagine.
Scaling takes infrastructure, finance, policy and people moving together. No single breakthrough does it alone.
Focus beats scattered experiments.

What Paxtier is now

Paxtier has grown from a newsletter into a resource innovation firm with three parts. The Paxtier Report is our independent media arm. Paxtier Advisory works with funds, corporates and development banks moving into these markets. Paxtier Ventures invests in, founds and advises companies building new supply. Each makes the others sharper: the Report shows us where markets are forming, advisory keeps us at the table with the people funding them, and ventures put that knowledge to work.

What's coming in the Report

Interviews with the investors, founders and buyers building resource innovation, in the spirit of the fireside chats many of you first read here.
Market maps that start from the buyer: who pays, how much, and what stands in the way.
Signals: the deals, launches and policy moves that matter, in a few lines each.

I'd love to hear from you. Write to contact@paxtier.com and tell me which market you'd like us to dig into first, or who we should be talking to.

Peter