- InSoil has obtained a €120 million senior secured credit facility from Pollen Street Capital to help agricultural small and medium-sized businesses across Europe access transition financing.
- The loans are guaranteed by the European Investment Fund through the InvestEU programme, which is raising at least €372 billion for EU policy goals.
- This is InSoil’s third major capital raise in a year, after a €50 million EIF-backed fund and a carbon-credit financing partnership. It is also among the largest private credit commitments for sustainable agriculture in Europe.
InSoil, a Lithuanian fintech that began by funding tractors for Baltic wheat farmers, has now secured one of Europe’s largest private credit facilities for sustainable agriculture. The €120 million facility from London-based Pollen Street Capital represents a major commitment to lending in this sector.
With this financing, InSoil can offer more mid-term loans to small and medium-sized farms that use sustainable methods such as no-till farming, cover crops, crop rotation, and reduced use of synthetic fertiliser.
The European Investment Fund guarantees these loans through the InvestEU programme.
“European agriculture is entering a new investment cycle. Farmers need capital to modernise equipment, improve soil health and build more resilient businesses, but specialised financing has been scarce. This facility lets us meet that demand at scale, and shows that sustainable agriculture has become an investable asset class for institutional capital,” says Laimonas Noreika, chief executive and founder of InSoil.
A €62 billion gap that banks leave unfilled
This facility focuses on a segment that traditional banks often overlook. The European Investment Bank estimates that European agriculture faces a €62 billion annual financing gap for SMEs, as the market is considered too fragmented, seasonal, and lacking enough collateral for most lenders.
InSoil was founded in Vilnius, Lithuania, in 2020 by Noreika, Darius Verseckas, and Andrius Liukaitis. It started as HeavyFinance, a peer-to-peer platform that used heavy farm equipment as collateral.
The company now offers mid-term loans to farmers moving to regenerative practices and uses soil science in its credit process. InSoil has collected over 15,000 soil samples, building one of the largest soil carbon datasets in the region to support credit decisions and climate tracking.
Since 2020, it has financed more than 3,500 small and medium-sized farms across Europe, helping a market segment that often lacks access to credit.
InSoil’s data-driven approach makes it different from traditional agricultural lenders and likely encouraged Pollen Street to invest heavily in a sector that most private credit funds avoid.
Why Pollen Street keeps investing
“InSoil has built a genuinely differentiated position in European agricultural finance, combining deep relationships, rigorous credit underwriting and a strong track record. Backed by the EIF guarantee, the facility offers compelling structural protection,” notes Paul Varty, investment director at Pollen Street.
The firm says this investment highlights Pollen Street’s ongoing focus on European speciality finance platforms that have strong loan origination, government-backed protections, and clear positive environmental and social impact.
Pollen Street has also supported UK online SME lender Capify with a £100 million credit facility and provided similar secured loans to SME lenders in the UAE and Ireland, each time using structural protections to serve markets that traditional banks avoid.
Founded in 2013, Pollen Street manages more than €8 billion in assets across private equity and credit strategies. It closed its fourth private credit fund at £2.5 billion in 2026, bringing total assets under management to £7.1 billion.
InSoil’s third fundraising round this year, each involving the EIF
The European Investment Fund has played a central role in InSoil’s fundraising over the past year. This is not InSoil’s first EIF-backed facility; the company previously closed a €50 million fund with a €20 million cornerstone commitment from the EIF and formed a financing partnership with a carbon-market investor to expand its carbon-credit supply.
These three deals show that InSoil has created several capital products: an EIF-backed credit fund, a carbon-market financing partnership, and now an EIF-guaranteed institutional credit facility, all supporting the same loan portfolio. Rather than raising one large round, InSoil built a layered capital structure that allows it to borrow against the same regenerative agriculture loans from investors with varying risk profiles.
This deal brings up a bigger question. If government guarantees are needed to make agri-SME lending appealing to funds like Pollen Street, then the main obstacle to closing Europe’s €62 billion financing gap depends on how many guarantee schemes the EIF and similar groups can support, and how many platforms, besides InSoil, can use this capital effectively.
