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Expanding Key Opportunities in FOrest Investments: Liquidity, Impact and Ownership through Blockchain

Project description

Small tokens give big boost to forest investments

The EU has close to 182 million hectares of forests covering 43 % of its land area. These forest areas are one of Europe's most important renewable resources. In terms of investment, forestry is a strong performer, offering attractive returns and protection against inflation. The EU-funded EKOFOLIO project is designing a new platform that divides large forests into small tradable tokens so that small and medium investors can purchase shares from as little as EUR 50 per token. To introduce the aspect of liquidity in forestry investment, selling and sharing the tokens before the trees mature is an option. The project expects to cover nearly 100 000 hectares of forest assets under a sustainable forest investment programme by 2024.

Objective

Investment into forestry is increasingly being recognised as a stable form of investment that offers guaranteed returns that are not dependent on the state of the economy. Returns from forestry are dependent solely on the growth and quality of the trees thus investors are shielded from economic factors such as inflation. However, the high initial investment capital required, lengthy asset maturity period of between 25 to 60 years and difficulty in converted the forest investment to cash prior to maturity, results in the forestry investment sector being dominated by large organisations and wealthy individuals. Small to medium investors are largely excluded from investment into forestry. Ekofolio is a FinTech company whose goal is to make forestry investment available to a wide variety of investors including the marginalised small and medium investors. Ekofolio is proposing a novel platform in which large forests are divided into small tradable tokens which allow small to medium investors purchasing shares in forests from as little as €50 per token. The token owner can either hold onto or sell the shares long before the trees mature thus introducing the aspect of liquidity which is currently lacking in forestry investment. We are targeting a wide spectrum of investors from small/medium and retail to large institutional and wealthy investors. We expect to reach a turnover of €52 million, with a Return on Investment (ROI) in excess of 10Xper Euro invested by 2024. Through this project, we will create more than 30 jobs within the forestry, Investments and Blockchain industries in addition to to the social benefits associated with the conservation of global natural forests through our sustainable forest investment program. Our forestry creation and management will cover nearly 100 thousand hectares of forest assets under management, enabling the sequestration of more than around 57 million tons of CO2 emissions by 2024.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

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Programme(s)

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Topic(s)

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Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1

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Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) H2020-EIC-SMEInst-2018-2020

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Coordinator

EKOFOLIO SARL
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 50 000,00
Address
18 RUE ROBERT STUMPER
2557 LUXEMBOURG
Luxembourg

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SME

The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.

Yes
Region
Luxembourg Luxembourg Luxembourg
Activity type
Private for-profit entities (excluding Higher or Secondary Education Establishments)
Links
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 71 429,00
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