BAKU, Azerbaijan, October 1. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is providing a 30 million euro sustainability-linked loan to Scandagra Group, a leading agribusiness trader and supplier serving more than 6,000 farmers across the Baltic states, Trend reports.
The financing will support Scandagra’s introduction of precision-agriculture technologies across 150,000 hectares of farmland in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Among the innovations are Dataväxt, a digital tool designed for farmers, and a new platform for monitoring, reporting, and verifying green activities. These technologies will help optimize the use of fertilizers and pesticides, boosting nutrient efficiency and cutting greenhouse gas emissions by an estimated 14,000 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent per year.
This marks Scandagra’s first sustainability-linked loan, structured with performance incentives tied to meeting sustainability targets. The financing is backed by a European Union InvestEU guarantee, which helped establish ambitious green key performance indicators.
Given that agrifood systems account for approximately one-third
of global greenhouse gas emissions and play a substantial role in
biodiversity depletion, the implementation of climate-smart
agricultural methodologies, including precision fertilization
techniques, is deemed essential for mitigating the ecological
impact of agriculture and curtailing aquatic pollution.
Scandagra, with its operational nexus in Sweden, operates under a
co-ownership model between the Swedish agribusiness cooperative
Lantmännen and the Danish agribusiness cooperative Dansk Landbrugs
Grovvareselskab.
The EBRD continues to be a pivotal player in the investment
landscape of the Baltic states, with cumulative allocations
amounting to 1.31 billion euros in Estonia, 1.19 billion euros in
Latvia, and 1.93 billion euros in Lithuania thus far.
