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.
Preseco And Pontos Target To Set Up A Fund For Customer Project Financing
Preseco closed around of €10m round including an equity investment by Pontos, a private equity investor and project financing arrangements with Atradius and Finnvera. In addition, Preseco and Pontos have begun strategic co-operation and are aiming to set up a fund for project finacing. This is a new and very innovative vehicle to resolve the issue of customer financing requirements of €10m-€20m per project - a typical sum for global environmental technology projects (press release). To close the transaction, Preseco announced the appointment of Risto J. Pönnö as their new CEO to speed up Preseco's growth (press release).
