Manitoba First Fund taps into Calgary-based Pine Hill Capital

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This article was published 03/09/2024 (718 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The family firm of former Winnipeg architect and real estate developer Helmut Peters is the latest member of the Manitoba First Fund’s team of investment funds.

The MFF will invest $5 million into Calgary-based Pine Hill Capital Ltd., which will match that investment and seek to do two or three deals with small- or medium-sized Manitoba companies.

Peter Spencer, grandson of Helmut Peters and managing director of Pine Hill, said the firm intends to invest in companies with annual earning of between $1 million and $5 million.

Pine Hill has been doing private-equity style investing for about eight years and have been admittedly low key about. (The University of Manitoba-trained Peters founded Pine Hill roughly 40 years ago.)

Unlike other such firms, Pine Hill has not solicited outside investments into its fund, with MFF being its first partner. Spencer said the firm has oil and gas and some real estate investments in its portfolio.

Although it’s not made any prior investments in Manitoba, Spencer said the firm has deep roots in the province and will seek to broaden those roots with the opening of a Winnipeg office staffed by Brad Klassen (a current partner at Fort Group Chartered Professional Accountants Inc.) and Art Pauls (recently retired founder of Gateway Kitchen and Bath).

“We’re pretty excited about this opportunity,” Spencer said. “We’re looking forward to getting deeper into the Winnipeg business community, meeting entrepreneurs, founders and business owners as we look to make investments in this space.”

Ken Ross, CEO of MFF, said the connection with Pine Hill was made through a referral.

“I think this worked out quite well,” he said. “They have really strong connections in Manitoba, so that was a bonus.”

Pine Hill will be sector agnostic in its investment targets in Manitoba, although Spencer did say the province’s light manufacturing sector has all sorts of opportunities and it’s also interested in the agri-business field, including ag-tech enterprises.

It is the fifth fund MFF has invested in, bring it to $75 million invested from the $100 million the province has committed to the enterprise.

Ross said his top priority is to find some fund partners who will invest in early stage startups.

“That’s been my primary focus for quite a while now,” he said. “It’s a little more difficult at that end of the investment spectrum. They are smaller funds with higher risk and the current environment is harder for them to raise funds or close at levels they hope to hit, so some of that takes longer than they had anticipated.”

Prior to the $5 million invested in Pine Hill, MFF committed $25 million to Saskatoon-based WestCap Management’s Connect First Manitoba Fund, which has about $80 million to invest; $25 million in Calgary-based Triwest Opportunities Fund Manitoba, which has $350 million of available capital to invest (although it’s not likely all of that will be placed in Manitoba); $15 million in Regina-based PFM Capital Inc., which will match that for a $30-million fund; and $5 million in Calgary-based Tall Grass Ventures, which has $32 million to invest.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca