Biovakka is a small company in South-Western Finland, which built the first large-scale and centralized biogas plant which is able to process different raw materials in this country. Their second power plant went online in the end of 2008, and further biogas power plants are currently being planned, so the company is well on track to bring financially viable and sustainable energy solutions to Finland and surrounding countries.
Hendrik Morkel
Recent Posts
Biogas From Biovakka
Lumi Group Enlightens Our Streets
Having nearly three months of very few daylight hours in winter, it is no surprise that a Finnish company looks at ways to make our dark days more bright. The Lumi Group Oy from Turku has spotted a profitable niche and developed an excellent product, and is now set to profit handsomely from the changes in EU legislation which make our old street lightning outdated and in need of more energy efficient street lights.
Being Self-Sustainable With Tuulivoimala.com
Many cleantech companies are large scale companies who aim to work with the utilities, who require millions in investments for R&D, production facilities, and rolling out their product. Quickly one forgets about the smaller players, and one of those smaller players is Tuulivoimala, who develops and markets wind and solar power solutions to private customers, and who are quite successful with their venture.
Suntrica Chargers Now Apple Approved
While much of the attention at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona is on new handsets and software, Suntrica from Finland silently announced that they got their Solar Strap approved by Apple. Their new Solar Strap, which comes now in four nice colours and got even lighter, is working with the iPhone 3G and 3 GS, as well as the iPod Touch, Classic and Nano. This is a great opportunity for all the Apple fans to charge their iPhones and iPods while away from an outlet, be it in the city or hiking.
For those who don’t have an iPhone or iPod but are looking for an environmentally friendly way to load their phones and gadgets, Suntrica still has the normal SolarStrap which is compatible with a range of phones, and also can be loaded up via USB for those rainy days and carried as a backup. Finally, the company is also helping out the people in Haiti, as relief workers are powering their mobile phones with Suntrica chargers – a great sign that they are not only interested in profits, but also in the well being of other people.
EV Technology In The North: Taking Off?
A week after we reported on the THINK City the Norwegians announce that the top US cities in which they are going to roll out the THINK City are Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and New York. To top things off they are working with AeroVironment, Inc. to develop a fast charging system which loads the car in 15 minutes, and these fifteen minutes give you a 80% charge. That makes long distance travel with the THINK City possible, given that the charging stations are many and placed at the right locations.
In other news, Better Place, the company which is working on creating the infrastructure for your EV with switchable batteries, announced that they secured USD 350m in a series B round, and have now HSBC, Morgan Stanley Investment Management and Lazard Asset Management among their investors. That gives Better Place a value of USD 1,25 billion, which should give them the funds to develop and roll out their technology. They aim to have their solution ready for 2011 in Denmark, so we can be sure to see some of that money flow to the country on the Jutland peninsula.
THINK Has Your EV Car Ready. Now.
THINK is not a start-up anymore, though it was one in the beginning of the 1990s when the world experienced a similar recession. Their history is fascinating, with USD 150m invested by US car giant Ford during the companies ownership of the Norwegians, struggling after Ford sold them out in 2003, until in 2006 Norwegian Investinor and other investors bought the company. Under new management and with new strategic goals the company is ready to become a major player in the growing electric vehicle market.
Their vision is to provide a better way of moving, which is carbon and carefree. The result of their vision is an electric city car with a Scandinavian design and modern technology under the hood. The THINK City is manufactured in Finland by Valmet Automotive, who is also a shareholder and strategic partner. It seems the Finns are establishing themselves slowly but surely as a major player in the EV manufacturing segment, a very smart decision. But back to THINK.
Sweden Puts Its Cleantech Into One Building
During the second half of 2009 Sweden held the EU Presidency, and the cleantech businesses of the country asked themselves: “How can we increase Swedish exports of Green Business?” Their solution was to collect companies in one building in downtown Stockholm, close to government offices and city hall, to allow Ministers, MPs, businesses and other interested people to have a look at what Sweden has to offer in cleantech.
Combining Research And Business Into An Innovative Start-Up
Absolicon Solar Concentrator Ab from Sweden is a company which was born out of research conducted by the Royal Institute of Technology and various other universities and grew into a well funded business. The Nordic countries are well known for investing heavily into education and university research; but research alone is not enough if it’s not transformed into a commercial product. Good that Absolicon was able to make that jump and pursue a largely untapped niche.
Suntrica Keeps Your Gadgets Charged
Suntrica Oy was one of the companies we visited during the Finnfacts Cleantech Blogger Tour 09, and who handed us out an actual product for testing, the SolarStrap. The tech savvy person has usually a few gadgets on him – cellphone, smart phone, PDA, MP3 Player, GPS, etc. – and at some point might run into the problem of an empty battery. That’s no problem if an outlet & charger are at hand, but what if on the go and none of these are available?
The World Gets Thinner With Beneq
It is nice to be able to write about positive growth stories for a Finnish SME in these times, especially if the company is located in the Cleantech sector and was just established in 2005. Beneq is located in Vantaa and during the Finnfacts Cleantech Blogger Tour 09 we went for a visit, where CEO Sampo Ahonen and Marketing Manager Joe Pimenoff gave us a presentation on what the company is about and also granted us a look at their products and premises.
Eniram Is Optimizing The Maritime Industry
Eniram, a Finnish startup, helps the maritime industry to save fuel, emissions and money. The company, based in Helsinki and established in 2005, currently employs forty people and has seen good growth during the last years.
Eniram uses IT in an old industry. They integrate their measurement system in ships, and with a simple UI the crew can optimize the performance of their ship. Installation takes two days and can be done on the water during operation, so it doesn’t hinder the driving of the ship. It can be installed on all kinds of vessels, from passenger to container ships. Annual savings of up to USD 400k can be made per ship, and payback times vary between two and fourteen months.
Full Steam Ahead With GreenSteam
Daniel Jacobsen, CEO of Decision 3 came from the Faroe Islands to attend the Lahti Cleantech Day 09 to tell about his company’s product, GreenSteam. Fuel efficiency and optimization of existing ships is their business, and as the maritime sector is looking for ways to drive down emissions and costs GreenSteam is coming out right on time with their technology.
Seafaring is getting under a lot of pressure to minimize CO2 emissions, 15% till 2015 is what the International Maritime Organization demands, and with 6% of global CO2 emissions by 2020 being emitted by the sector its high time to look for ways to optimize. Given that fuel costs are often half of a seafaring company’s expenses, looking for ways to optimize should come natural.
AleLion Makes Customer-Driven Batteries
I had a chat with Torbjörn Sundström, CEO of AleLion Batteries at the Lahti Cleantech Day ‘09 and he told me about their customer-driven business.
Based in Gothenburg, AleLion was founded in 2006 and currently employs 30 people. The company will have a turnover of €2m in 2009. Investors have invested less than €1m into the company, and while the company does not really need capital urgently, Torbjörn told me that they might go looking for further capital in order to grow faster and go past the European borders.
Entrepreneurial And Management Skills A Must
Reporting live from the Lahti Cleantech Venture Day ‘09. The first impression is that there are lot of VCs around, which are looking to invest in Finland, and Scandinavia in general.
German, Dutch, and UK venture capitalists are present and willing to finance tickets between €1M up to €5M for first round investments. One VC on the panel commented that the economic crisis has created a lot of risk, which makes investing lucrative again – big risks, big pay-offs. The economic downturn has also made the cleantech sector more prominent and serious for investors. When you run out of money, it’s finally time to think!
While some governments have gone forward and created policies to support innovations in cleantech – feed-in tariffs and subsidies -the general feeling is that more needs to be done if the industry should remain attractive for investors and help start-ups to succeed in a market that, especially in the case of energy, is still dominated by a few big players.
While Finland and Scandinavia remain an interesting breeding ground for clean technologies, it’s generally agreed here that the cleantech sector is global. So while start-ups get going close to home, they realize that they need to get the money to go international quickly. VCs remarked that winners in the area have not materialized yet, or are being created right now. Both camps have one demand in common: entrepreneurial and management skills need to be present in the start-up -it’s not enough to just have a great product!
Me-Mover Moves You
Bringing you the latest in cleantech, we look today to Denmark, where in less than three weeks the United Nations Climate Change Conference aka “Hopenhagen” will start. But instead of letting our incompetent politicians decide about our future, lets take matters into our own hands – or in this case, feet. Cloudbikes hails from Valby in Denmark, a mere 55 km from Copenhagen, and aims to eliminate the daily need for a car and making our lives more safe, comfortable and sustainable.
Biovakka Suomi Oy 
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