(Reuters) September 1, 2010 – Galtere, a New York fund manager that also operates out of Switzerland, said it was raising $1b to invest in production facilities for agricultural commodities that it planned to later sell or list publicly.

The private equity style fund will focus on agribusiness projects in Brazil, Uruguay and Australia such as arable farmlands; livestock and crop production, irrigation and water management; agricultural warehousing and yield-enhancing technologies.

“I believe the geography, supply and demand conditions and resources of the countries we have targeted present a wealth of attractive agricultural projects,” Renatto Barbieri, Galtere’s portfolio manager, said in a statement.

Barbiere previously led Deutsche Bank’s natural resource private equity business.

Galtere said it would employ long-term strategies that could take up to seven years to bring desired efficiency, production and profit to its agribusiness projects, before embarking on a trade sale or initial public offering.

Galtere did not divulge how far it was from its $1b fund raising target although it said it had begun to invest in projects that offered “excellent long term growth potential”.

“We’re in the middle of the first round of asset raising and so far we’ve had significant interest in the private equity strategy,” Werner Schuenemann, Galtere’s head of investor relations and business development, said in a quote the company provided to Reuters.

By Barani Krishnan