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Re-imagining (and Re-tooling) Cleantech in Europe and beyond

Richard Youngman
by | April 24th 2013
Posted in Cleantech Events, Cleantech Investment Insight, Corporates in Cleantech

Last week we hosted our 9th European Cleantech Forum, where we took on the task of “re-imagining cleantech”.

The event set new attendance records. Conventional wisdom would suggest that, in its ninth year and with the cleantech moniker out of fashion in investment circles, this event should show signs of being past its peak. And yet, the more committed and enlightened of you keep coming – our sincerest thanks for that – and more new faces, new companies and new countries are added to the delegate list each year. These included, this year, representatives from Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru.

So why is that? That is because, as my keynote called out, we only just started.

I argued that, although investment numbers may be down, the market for clean technology products is still in growth and, according to a 2012 Roland Berger/WWF report, has become as sizeable a global market as a number of long-established industrial segments.

I argued that it was not that we had got the power and inevitability of the mega-trends giving rise to this huge innovation opportunity wrong, but we had learnt, painfully, that there is no quick buck to be made (without a …

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Something Has to ‘Give’ in European cleantech M&A

Richard Youngman
by | June 28th 2012
Posted in Cleantech Investment Insight, Europe and Israel, M&A Watch, Venture Capital

This week, one year ago, it was announced that ABB had acquired Epyon, a developer of fast-charging technology for electric vehicles.  Following on from BASF’s acquisition of Inge, Alinda’s acquisition of agri.capital and  Samsung’s of Liquavista, the M&A wave of venture-backed European cleantech companies we’d all been waiting for seemed to be happening. A year on – we are still waiting. It proved a false dawn, but surely, actually, some kind of a postponed dawn.

We have spent some weeks, with Richard Cave-Bigley as our project lead, analysing the state of the market and discussing this stand-off between potential buyers and sellers with many corporate representatives (in both M&A and venturing teams), venture firms, Limited Partners, and other market agents (such as lawyers, brokers and corporate finance advisors).

Here are some of our key impressions, detailed in a fuller research report we have released to our i3 subscribers today:

Something has to give soon (the title of the report). Many cleantech venture funds, with 2005-2007 vintages are in their divestment periods, with many more following on close behind. Such fund managers are trying to strike a delicate balance. On the one hand, they wish to time exits …

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Financing Growth for cleantech companies: learning from the pioneers

Richard Youngman
by | June 19th 2012
Posted in Cleantech Investment Insight, Venture Capital

In April, at Cleantech Forum Europe in Munich, I had the pleasure of moderating a panel on this subject, where we discussed some recent and current company case studies, to draw out the very real financing challenges facing growing cleantech companies and some of the possible solutions.

One of my original invitees, Richard McCombs, was unable to be with us that day, but I recently caught up with him and this inspired this interview-style blog post. Richard recently retired as CEO of MBA Polymers. Through that lens we discussed the financing challenges for growth companies with newer technologies, to draw out some tips for the future.

Richard Youngman (RY): MBA Polymers is the global leader in recycling plastics from end-of-life electronics, appliances and automobiles. What has been your experience in financing its growth journey?

Richard McCombs (RMc):  When we prepared to build our first commercial scale facility, we realized that we could not meet venture capitalists’ expected returns if we built our facilities with 100% MBA equity.  Our first facility was in China. So we structured it as a joint venture with MBA owning >50% and having full management control. We also negotiated that our partner would …

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Zouk provides a (fundraising) boost for cleantech in Europe

Richard Youngman
by | June 20th 2011
Posted in Cleantech Funds and Investors, Cleantech Investment Insight, Venture & Private Equity Watch

Whilst the flow of capital to European cleantech companies has remained quite strong in the last two years, the flow to funds has been almost non-existent. The consequence? The headroom of available capital for private and independent companies from European funds has fallen from its highpoint in 2008. Wheb Partners is about the only dedicated European cleantech fund manager to have announced a follow-on fund in the last 12 months; and that fell short of its original target. Until this morning – and the announcement from Zouk Capital of the largest European investment vehicle dedicated to cleantech companies.

In 2010, our funds’ fundraising tracking would tell us that the vast majority of new cleantech funds closed were in Asia, China especially. In 2011, the US has had a strong run of cleantech IPOs to provide grounds for optimism that the cleantech investment theme was starting to move on from the worst of the 2008-2010 period. Europe has been waiting for similar good news, and feel good stories. I think they are starting to arrive.

Zouk Capital, formerly Zouk Ventures, went public this morning with the closure of its new Cleantech Europe II fund, a €230 million fund for European expansion-stage …

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Corporate Matters, and Corporates Matter

Richard Youngman
by | February 3rd 2011
Posted in Cleantech Events, Cleantech Investment Insight, Corporates in Cleantech

The Rise of the Corporation in Cleantech is a strategic phenomenon we all need to monitor, embrace and take action on. I, at least, believe that, but then I am an insider, deeply embedded in the cleantech world on an all day, every day, basis. I still get surprised by how prevalent the view is amongst ‘outsiders’ that the ‘green’ thing died with the boom, and that it’s now back to normal. How do I get across to people more effectively why this wave of innovation we call cleantech is far from run? That indeed it is still adolescent in its lifecycle, and that it is going to gradually, but relentlessly, disrupt the industrial order that I, as a western-born child of the ’60s (just, I might add!), have grown up with. Don’t confuse the ongoing inability of our politicians to strike a binding Climate Change agreement with inaction in the private sector. Watch the multi-national corporations; they are on the move. At corporate pace, admittedly.

Tipped off by a colleague, today I have discovered a new way to illustrate why those who get it, are getting active. No more facts and figures needed, as noteworthy as it is though that, for example, during 2010, there …

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Elephants and fleas: learning to dance for a cleantech future

Richard Youngman
by | June 18th 2010
Posted in Cleantech Investment Insight, Corporates in Cleantech
Tags: , , , , , ,

Hardly a day goes by in my cleantech world where I don’t pick up on an example of elephants and fleas coming together in some way to develop clean technologies of the future. Borrowing Charles Handy’s metaphor from his famous book, the elephants represent the large incumbent, slow-moving organizations, the fleas the nimble, upstart, entrepreneurs who feed off the elephants. The two are inter-dependent, albeit dancing together is awkward.

Yesterday, in my daily caffeine-supported scan of the wires, I read about the relationship of Novozymes and Lignol, and EnOcean and Texas Instruments. Earlier in the week, more details of the partnership originally announced in May between Tesla and Toyota surfaced through the filings for Tesla’s forthcoming IPO. I could have picked other examples. But these are good ones, as they illustrate the inter-dependencies, the international nature of such marriages of convenience, and the broad spectrum of industrial players and sectors involved.

Novozymes, the Danish industrial enzymes producer, and Lignol, a TSX-listed, pre-revenue, Canadian cellulosic ethanol developer, have agreed to collaborate on research to develop a process of making biofuel from forestry waste which can compete on price with gasoline and corn ethanol in the US.

Enocean, a German developer of …

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2010 Global Cleantech 100: in search of elusive exits and the brightest newborns

Richard Youngman
by | June 17th 2010
Posted in Companies
Tags: , , , , , ,

A year is a long time in politics, the old adage goes. The same might be said of cleantech too.

It is over a half year, since in our “ten predictions for 2010”, we anticipated a rise in investor exits in 2010. Our assertion in November 2009 was that growth and venture capital investment activity would be buoyed by attractive valuations and the return of the exit. We wrote, “exits in the form of IPOs (A123Systems went public in September, and there are over two dozen IPOs now in the queue) and a growing number of trade sales to corporate buyers will encourage investors in private companies to believe they can generate returns.”

It is nearly a year since, in partnership with the Guardian, we published the first Global Cleantech 100, a list of the 100 private cleantech companies most likely to make the most significant market impact over the next 5 to10 years – according to the world’s cleantech community.

If ever there was a list of cleantech companies where one would have expected exit action over the last months, it would have been this. However, the relative small amount of exit turnover on the list is well-aligned …

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