Vantage Capital, Africa’s predominant mezzanine fund manager with approximately R8bn ($478m) of assets under management, has fully exited its investment in TrenStar, one of Southern Africa’s leading returnable packaging companies.

Following the exit, the new investors in the company are Kleoss Capital Fund l, private equity investment manager Leaf Capital, and TrenStar management.

In December 2010 Vantage provided expansion funding to TrenStar and funded its black empowerment partner African Woman Chartered Accountants Investment Holdings to acquire a 26% stake in TrenStar.

Johnny Jones, Associate Partner at Vantage Capital said, “Vantage provided expansion and black empowerment funding to TrenStar which was required to fuel the company’s impressive growth over the past five years. This was a successful investment for both TrenStar and Vantage.”

TrenStar's vast fleet of diverse standard and customised, returnable rental packaging is used in a myriad of industries to facilitate and ensure the packaging, storage, protection and safe transportation of valuable parts and other assets.

The fleet is supported by a National Depot Infrastructure ensuring the effective maintenance and distribution of containers on a JIT (Just in time) principle which is aimed at enhancing the already proven benefits of this very sensible green solution.

TrenStar has the ability to deliver extended logistical services to the returnable packaging client base that consist of centralised analytical services on packaging, inventory and account movement to enable efficient decision making in the supply chain and supply chain costs.

Luc Albinski, Managing Partner at Vantage, said: “The talented management team at TrenStar has always combined forward-thinking, superb client service and rigorous cost improvements to deliver industry-leading inventory management for its industry partners.”

To date Vantage has successfully exited seven investments from its first two mezzanine funds with total proceeds of almost R2.2bn ($131m).

Colin Rezek, Co-founder of Vantage, said: “Vantage has demonstrated that it can provide companies with unique mezzanine funding solutions that are not within the mandates of banks or private equity funds, whilst providing Vantage investors with attractive risk-adjusted returns”