1NatCap

Merchant Markets

Overview

Merchant Markets is the layer that turns a portfolio of projects into a market. It originates, contracts, warehouses, trades, and manages risk across verticals, and it standardizes bespoke projects into repeatable products.

The Merchant Model

Principal ownership

Take equity, GP interests, working interests, options, offtake rights, or control positions.

Physical and financial integration

Finance projects with full understanding of how the underlying product is produced and sold.

Long-term contracting

Use offtake, tolling, supply, land-use, and environmental-rights agreements to stabilize economics.

Warehousing

Hold assets or contractual rights before securitization, refinancing, or sale.

Standardization

Convert bespoke projects into repeatable contracts, SPVs, and instruments.

Capital recycling

Develop or acquire, improve, refinance or syndicate, and redeploy capital.

Why This Exists
Commodity markets in oil, grain, and metals were built by merchants, not producers or financiers. A trading house that understood how a barrel of oil moved from wellhead to refinery to end buyer could take positions no pure financier would touch and manage risks no pure operator could price. Natural capital has never had that function. Projects exist. Capital exists. What has been missing is a merchant who understands the physical product, holds a position in it, and connects it to a buyer on the other side. Merchant Markets is that function, built for natural capital the way trading desks were built for energy and agriculture decades ago.

Revenue Streams

Merchant Markets earns across the full arc of a position, from origination through eventual sale or syndication, not from a single transaction fee.

Revenue Source	Description
Offtake margins	Spread captured between the price paid to originate physical product or environmental outcomes and the price realized on sale or delivery.
Forward-contract spreads	Value captured by contracting supply or outcomes ahead of delivery and monetizing the difference between forward and spot pricing.
Inventory and timing spreads	Value from holding positions through periods of price dislocation and releasing them when pricing is more favorable.
Marketing-agency commissions	Fees earned representing a project's output to buyers without taking principal position.
Aggregation and contract restructuring	Value created by combining smaller, bespoke positions into standardized, larger, more liquid contracts.
Basis and location value	Value captured from price differences across delivery points, jurisdictions, or contract structures for a comparable underlying asset.
Risk-management revenue	Fees and spreads earned structuring hedges, matched positions, and risk transfer for counterparties across the verticals.
Warehousing and syndication gains	Value realized holding a position to maturity or improved condition, then syndicating or selling down to other capital.

Market Making and Liquidity

Merchant Markets extends beyond origination and warehousing into active market making, the function that turns a collection of individual positions into a liquid, tradable market. Internally, this means providing secondary-market support for instruments and environmental assets originated across the platform: standing ready to transact, positioning inventory, and maintaining orderly trading in 1NatCap's own products rather than leaving early investors with no exit before maturity. Externally, where commercially and legally appropriate, Merchant Markets extends the same capability to third-party counterparties, providing liquidity and principal trading around physical assets, offtake contracts, and financial instruments tied to the operating verticals.

This is the function that makes the benchmark pricing built in Data, Standards, and Price Discovery mean something in practice. A reference price is only useful if a market participant can actually transact near it. Merchant Markets is where transactability gets built, one matched position and one standing bid at a time.

Building the Financial Infrastructure for Natural Capital

Whether you're an institutional investor, sovereign partner, project developer, or industry participant, we're building the platform that transforms environmental outcomes into institutional-quality assets. Let's shape the next generation of natural capital markets together.

This material is intended for information purposes only, and does not constitute investment advice, a recommendation or an offer or solicitation to purchase or sell any securities, funds or strategies to any person in any jurisdiction in which an offer, solicitation, purchase or sale would be unlawful under the securities laws of such jurisdiction. The opinions expressed are as of August 2026 and are subject to change without notice. Reliance upon information in this material is at the sole discretion of the reader.