Via Venture Partners Raises A New Fund Of EUR 134 Million Targeting Nordic ICT
Via Venture Partners has announced (PDF) raising of a new fund. The fund is its second, amounting to 134 million euros. In addition to the VC's original fund founded in 2006, this makes Via Venture Partners one of the largest VCs in the Nordic region with a total of EUR 268 million of committed capital. The fund targets Nordic high growth potential ICT firms that have a global market opportunity.
Deloitte Tech Fast 50 Finland Winners Announced
I participated in the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 Finland awards ceremony last night to see who the 50 fastest growing technology companies in Finland were. Before the awards ceremony though, there were two talks by Kaija Pöysti, the founder of Trantex, a translation company that grew to about 200 people before she sold it, and Petteri Koponen the co-founder of Jaiku and partner in Lifeline Ventures among many others.
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.
The Finnish Cleantech Market In 2010
Recently, we have seen increasing investor interest in the Finnish cleantech market, which closed a total of €40-50m worth of investments in Q3 including those in companies such as European Batteries, a large scale lithium ion battery manufacturer, Nokia spin-off There Corporation, a sub/smart metering technology provider, and Preseco, a waste-to-energy company. Investments in Finnish clean technologies represented around 50% of cleantech VC investments in the Nordics, which closed a total of €100m worth of investments (source: Cleantech Scandinavia). Examples of Nordic investments are in companies like Danish biomass fuelled engine technology provides Stirling, Swedish nanowire semiconductor LED developer Glo (a link to release), Norwegian solar cell manufacturer Innotech Solar and EV company Think Global.
But will the investments in Finnish clean technologies in 2010 exceed those for 2009? We do not know the final figures for 2009 yet. In 2008, Finnish cleantech companies posted a total of €139.5m in investments, which represented the highest proportion (37%) of total investments (€372m) in all Nordic countries.
Picodeon Sells Coldlab Deposition Technology Also For Cleantech
Despite of our arctic geographical location in Finland, we have a technology link for a global solar energy market. The advanced coating technology companies like BraggOne, Beneq and Picodeon offer solutions also for thin film PV and cell industry. It is worth pointing out that based on nanotechnology, all of these companies have wide-range of applications also for other industries than cleantech.
Picoden Coldlab laser deposition technology is a disruptive coating and thin film deposition technology. It can deposit virtually any type of layer onto any material. The company sells a solution which is a combination of licenses (IPR), hardware tailored for the application as well as engineering and coating services.
