Victoria Young  |  9 May 2023

Hans Albrecht with wife Ursula visiting Waiheke’s Man O’War winery. (Image: Hans Albrecht)

Mega-rich investor Hans Albrecht arrived in New Zealand quite by accident. In 2020, the businessman, who founded the Carlyle Group in Europe, was meant to visit Australia to sail his classic yacht, the Nordwind.

However, a few days before he was to leave, it was discovered his other boat was too long to dock in Sydney. So, he decided to visit Great Barrier Island instead. Shortly after, Aotearoa went into lockdown.

“We spent that first lockdown on our superyacht Aschanti,” Albrecht told BusinessDesk. “Frankly, I know the experience I had, well, a lot of people would have paid money to have that as a vacation.”

Through a NZ connection from the board of his son’s former school, Albrecht met Ice house Ventures chief executive Robbie Paul and low-key private-equity heavyweight Ross George of Direct Capital. “I invited Ross to dinner, and he brought his son… he also asked if he could bring his neighbour. “I said, ‘Bring whoever you want,”‘ Albrecht recalls. “We have a very good cook on the ship, basically [Michelin] star level.”

“Turns out his neighbour is John Key… so we got right into the middle of NZ just like that; we had a lot of fun.” George recalls his first meeting with Albrecht quite clearly.

“When I met him [in 2020], NZ was despondent; we had 80% of our companies closed and people were trying to work out what happened. and we had relatives getting sick, family stuck overseas.

“He was a shard of light … we were all struggling in those early days of covid.” George and Albrecht would continue to meet to discuss everything from Chinese investment to the logistics market. Former prime minister Key told BusinessDesk in a text message, “I don’t know him really well, but I remember him being a fascinating guy with a deep knowledge of the private equity markets.”

Icehouse’s Paul would go on to introduce Albrecht to The Warehouse Group founder Stephen Tindall and Rocket Lab’s Peter Beck.

Hans Albrecht’s superyacht, Aschanti. (Image: Supplied)

On a boat

Paul also recalls planning an entrepreneur’s yachting trip for Albrecht, and says before they boarded the boat, the investor pulled him aside and said he wanted to earn his residency in NZ, not just buy it. He told Paul he had suggested setting up a deep-tech incubator to Key the night before.

“At that moment, I looked over his shoulder and, I shit you not, trying to get through the gate to board the boat was [biotech scientist and entrepreneur] Imche Fourie, whom I had invited on the boat at the last mint1te after someone else dropped out.

“I felt compromised, like some sort of salesman. but what are the odds? We had spent two years working on doing [a deep-tech incubator] and here was Hans saying he wanted to enable it,” Paul says.

Albrecht recalls Paul telling him he would need about SID million.

“I said, ‘OK, well that’s about five or six million euros, that’s not much, I’ll raise it; I’ll commit half and I’ll help you get the other half.”

Fourie’s Outset Ventures, previously known as LevelTwo, announced in 2021 that the $!Om it had raised with Icehouse would enable it to back20 to 30 ventures over thru..y_ears.

Perfect match

Icehouse Ventures’ Parnell headquaners has a “portfolio wall” of company merchandise. Paul showed this off to Albrecht when he visited.

“It was the first place I took him – to show off all these great Kiwi companies,” Paul recounts. “But he interrupted me and said, ‘Do you have anything in lithium extraction?’ “It felt like the most specific question that you could possibly.ask. But we had invested in Geo40 in 2014 and they recently pivoted co focus on lithium.”

Albrecht and his wife, Ursula, bought one million shares in Geo40 at about $1 each. According to chief executive John Worth, they are now valued at $1.50.

“But it’s more than capital, it’s those links and introductions;” Worth says of the investment.

“For example, he introduced us to [Austria-based international technology group I Andritz; the principal of that company [Wolfgang Leitner] is also an investor now. “But if we’d rung a firm like that, they’d laugh at us and say, ‘We can’t help you, you’re a bit small.'”

Like going shopping

Other direct investments Albrecht has made in NZ inclt1de energy firm Vortex Power Systems, CO2-capture service Hot Lime Labs, medkal testing stanup Orbis Diagnostics, waste firm Avenana, data platform OrbViz and plastic-recycling startup Nilo.

All up. he says, he’s invested more than $30m in the country.

“Sometimes, like when you go shopping, you just get more and more,” Albrecht says. “So, I decided to just go back and get more and more, investing more and more.

Albrecht’s son Christian and friend Leitner have put money into wastewater treatment company Hydroxsys and Zincovery. Leitner’s Ct1stos Vermogensverwaltungs also took stakes in Kea Aerospace and Vortex.

While having a profound impact on Aotearoa’s startup scene, the investments are likely a drop in the bucket for Albrecht, who is managing director of Nord wind Capital. which normally injects tens of millions of euros in companies at a time across Europe. having closed a €160m (NZ$280m) rot1nd in 2022.

Albrecht has also bought several apartments in one of Auckland’s premier apartment blocks, the Pacifica, but is aware of criticism surrounding ultra-high net worth individuals purchasing property here.

“We didn’t purchase any homesteads. What we bought in Pacifica, you know when they do these large developments, they sort of allow the ugly corners to be sold to foreigners for elevated prices.”

Property records show three apartments were bought for a total of $8.3m. The investor also pald$7.lm for 572 hectares of land in Hastings, which he told the Overseas Investment Office he would divide into two, then sell the farm to a third party and plant trees on the rest.

“I have been a green long before green parties existed, and hence, I like to plant trees,” Albrecht says, adding that once word got out about his major forestry purchase, Brent Ogilvie from Pacific Channel, one of his existing partners and coinvestors suggested they buy plots of Maori land that were no longer commercially viable.

“But I said, ‘I have a better idea.’

“The Maori contribute the land, I give money for planting trees, we plant trees, but we don’t farm for timber, we farm for carbon.

“They eventually connected with Blair Jamieson, a former Ministry for Primary Industries manager, with a strategy for how to utilise unproductive Maori land. Thus, Tamata Hauha was created, with Companies Office records showing Pacific Channel owning 57%, and two of Albrecht’s sons – Christian and Henry – owning 14%.

Jamieson has a 3% shareholding. Other investors include German investment banker Karl-Georg Altenburg and property developer Wolfgang Kaefer. A spokeswoman said Hans Albrecht has a stake in the firm, but it is unclear through which channel.

“Hans’ friends exhibit a high level of trust with each other, and they put money into us based on that relationship, before having a relationship with us on the ground,” Jamieson said.

He wouldn’t be specific on how much money the investors had put in, saying, “It’s not just about having money to give, it’s about hanging with them and learning about how to have conversations with funders.

“[Albrecht] was very warm and had a lot of ideas but certainly understood that there’s a certain way that we have to do business with Maori that might not make sense from an economic point of view, but that’s just the way that we have to do some things. He was very amenable to that.”

Lithium miners: Hans Albrecht with his skipper Kalle Ebner, Geo40’s John Worth, lithium model builder Thomas Parrish.

Visa status

His investments have meant Albrecht has joined the ranks of Google founder Larry Page and internet mogul Kim Dotcom as mega-rich investors who have gained residency here.

“Your immigration system, it’s very sensible in that everybody is welcome, as long as they contribute.

“Unfortunately, when you’re 65, you’re officially expired, you can’t contribute any more. Unless of course you make yourself useful by bringing in bags of money!”

Albrecht joined under the Investor Plus scheme, which was recently revamped as the active investor plus programme.

Under that programme, there are stricter criteria for what wealthy investors can invest in, including a list of preapproved businesses and managed funds.

Daniel Thomson is a client services director for Malcolm Pacific Immigration, which helped Albrecht secure his visa. He says the way investors enter NZ has been completely upended.

“Under the old category, the people who got investor visas were the biggest advocates for other clients.

“When you turn off that visa category, you see the connection to the world closed for a period of time and people start looking elsewhere.”

Richard Owen, general manager for Immigration NZ, says application numbers take time to grow and the new category prioritises value over volume.

At March 31, there were 36 businesses approved for investment, seeking $310 million. Of those, 15 had applied to the independent approval panel to show they have investors keen on putting money in.

Immigration NZ says 18 applications for the visa had been received, with five approved in principle. The value of investment proposed was $270 million.