Finnfund

Finnfund has invested in South Africa’s first clean technology investment fund. The Evolution One Fund is a 10 year private equity fund targeted to grow to 1 billion South African rands (about 85 million euro) by July 2009.

The fund, managed by Inspired Evolution Investment Management, conducted its first close in July 2008 at 400 million rands raised from the IFC (a member of the World Bank Group), Castleway Properties (advised by Consensus Business Group), the Swiss Investment Fund for Emerging Markets (Sifem) and Finnfund.

Significant business opportunities

Evolution One’s investment decisions will be based on the use of cleantech products, services, and processes which not only provide superior performance at lower costs but also reduce environmental and climate change impacts.

There are high growth opportunities in the agribusiness, cleaner production, pollution control, waste management and transportation sectors, as well as the core areas of energy and water.

Till now no fund has focused on cleantech in Africa where environmental and social issues make it a vitally important driver of the economic development of the region.

Priority for Finnfund

The Evolution One Fund will make around 10 to 15 investments in renewable energy and cleantech over a period of three to five years across the whole SADC region.

“Cleantech provides cross-sector opportunities to make more sustainable investments without foregoing the traditional returns of private equity. Having raised 400 million rands from our core international investors, we are now targeting a second round of international and local investors," Dr Zuko Kubukeli, Executive Director of Inspired Evolution Investment Management said.

"We are single-mindedly focusing on building strategic partnerships and on sourcing proprietary and appropriate technologies for application within the SADC region across a variety of investment projects,” Dr Kabukeli continued.

“Renewables and cleantech are priority areas for Finnfund. Therefore, supporting the first South African cleantech fund was seen appealing. We are also interested in cofinancing with the fund. Furthermore, the geographical scope of the fund enables investments in least and other low income countries enabling wider development impacts,“ says Mr Tuomas Suurpää, Investment Manager of Finnfund.

For more information at Finnfund, please contact Mr Tuomas Suurpää, tel. +358 9 3484 3307, firstname.lastname@finnfund.fi

_{Source: Inspired Evolution Investment Management www.inspiredevolution.co.za}