Enevo Closes €200k Angel Round For Smart Trash Sensors
As the saying goes, one man's trash is another man's treasure. But who knew you could make money just by looking at other people's trash? Out of Finland, Enevo is a company creating smart sensors to improve the logistics of the waste management industry, and just closed a EUR 200k angel round with Lifeline and four angel investors. In waste management the main cost is logistics: it takes a lot of trucks, hours and fuel to empty the tens thousands containers just in Finland alone. And the costs add up when the waste trucks are driving out to and dumping containers that are half-empty.
Nordic Performance In The Deloitte 500
Every year Deloitte puts together a ranking of the fastest growing companies in Europe. We edited that list down, and put together all the companies featured in the top half of the Deloitte 500 that were in ArcticStartup's area of interest. The first number you'll see is the company's ranking on the complete European list of companies, and also keep in mind the final number is based on the percentage revenue growth over the last five years:
AMSC's Finances Turns Off Acquisition Of The Switch
As a quick followup, The Switch, a windmill component engineering firm, is no longer being acquired by American Superconductor Corp. When the acquisition was announced last March we called The Switch "the next success story Finland has been waiting for," but yesterday The Switch shareholders and AMSC announced that they have agreed to terminate the acquisition agreement, due to adverse market conditions for the financing required to fund the acquisition. According to Bloomberg, AMSC has dropped 82 percent since April 5, when its largest customer, Chinese wind-turbine maker Sinovel Wind Group Co., refused to accept contracted shipments.
American Superconductor Acquires The Switch For 190M Euros
While we've cut down on the cleantech reporting, this one's a winner that deserves to be written about: American Superconductor has acquired The Switch Engineering for 190 million euros. We've previously written about The Switch as being one of the most potential cleantech companies coming out from Finland. They create generator and converter packages for the wind energy industry. Back in April 2010 we wrote that Switch is the next success story Finland has been looking for - it seems we were quite right with that statement.
New 150M Euro Fund To Be Launched In Finland?
Tattletech has a story on a new 150 million euro fund to be launched in Finland during Q2 of 2011. According to the article, there are three individuals behind the initiative - 2 telco pioneers and a Finn working in the European Investment Bank. I got in touch with the people behind the article and they confirmed this, working in PR, but were unable to give out anymore information just yet.
Interview With Helle Moen From Investinor - Video
At the beginning of July I was visiting the Oslo Cleantech Capital Day, where I spoke with Helle Moen from Investinor. Helle is an Investment Director at the venture fund, which invests into Norwegian Cleantech companies.
Lumi Group Raises First Part Of 2-4 M€ Financing
Lumi Group, the Finnish company that has spun off from Oversol Oy, has raised first part of its 2-4 million euro financing for marketing and further development of its LUMI R series street lights. The company has developed street lights using the LED-technology, which efficiently use about 40% less energy than equivalent traditional products.
Cleantech Venture Capital 2009 Part One – The Big Trends
At Cleantech Scandinavia we have just finished our annual analysis of Nordic cleantech investments. It’s the third year we do this and it allows us to some observations over time so here we go!
First and foremost, the total amount of capital attracted by cleantech companies in the Nordics rose to EUR 460,6 million during 2009, compared to EUR 371,9 million in 2008.
This 24% growth rate was achieved primarily because of the increase in public funding activity, which doubled compared to 2008, but it also includes a 9% increase in amounts of private equity investments. At the same time, the number of transactions in 2009 was down 22% compared to the previous year. What this means is that amounts was up per investment and, as you might have guessed, expansion stage companies attracted most of the funding.
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.
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.
A Couple Of Big Norwegians Close 2009 In Nordic Cleantech
Norwegian Investinor is already into the cleantech industry through investments in electric car-maker Think and Metallkraft (which is another cleantech fast-grower doing recycling in the solar industry). They opened their bank account before the holidays, investing 6.3 million euro in Innotech Solar, making it one of the bigger cleantech investments during the year. Innotech Solar was founded by people from within the solar industry, who saw a market opportunity in the solar cells that where not used due to low efficiency. Innotech Solar buys these cells and has the technology and production capacity to upgrade them, making them profitable. It is recycling and reuse in an industry where access to raw material has been crucial. The company was established in spring 2008, has grown to 42 employees, and already has sales offices in Germany and China. The company has previously managed to attract VC money from two of the most active cleantech investors in the Nordics - Northzone Ventures and Sustainable Technologies Fund.
Lars Aikala Of Valoya
Back in November we visited the Lahti Cleantech Venture Day where we had a chance to see a lot of different companies and people. One of the most interesting was Valoya. Valoya is a company working in an industry that most people wouldn't consider especially sexy. They are developing professional lights for greenhouses with LED technologies. While this may sound boring to the average man on the street, take a minute to think about how your vegetables are grown these days. The business is huge and about one third of the costs of producing vegetables go into electricity.
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.
John Liljelund Of AW-Energy
I talked with John Liljelund, the CEO of AW-Energy in Lahti, Finland a few weeks ago in the Cleantech Venture Forum. He discussed various aspects in how the company was founded and where they are at the moment with their product. Not only is the story behind the company very interesting, but he goes through in detail the different stages of investment the company has received including his own march to become the CEO of the company. AW-Energy develops a product called Waveroller which harnesses energy from the energy of the waves.
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!
