Investments in Finnish companies

Finnfund invests in businesses or projects in developing countries. While our investments can not target a company in Finland, we are interested in projects by Finnish companies as long as they meet our investment criteria.

How can we invest in Finnish companies doing business in developing markets?

Finnfund can invest in a Finnish-owned company with business in a developing country. We have, for example, started a joint venture in Thailand with Solar Finland, a company that has manufactured solar panels in Salo, Finland, for over 40 years. These sustainable, high-quality solar panels are now being produced at Salotech Thailand with Finnish know-how at its core.

Finnish companies can also act as technology suppliers in Finnfund’s investments. We have for example invested in Maarifa Education Group in Sub-Saharan Africa. They partnered with a Finnish EdTech company Claned, and use its distance-learning platform for teachers and students, enabling the universities to offer transformative academic programs and expand access to thousands of students in Africa. In South Africa, we have invested in the Fibertime Group, a company offering fast, uncapped, and time-based open-access fiber internet to townships while also providing a gateway to initiate micro-payments for accessing internet. Nokia’s technology has a crucial role in making this happen: Nokia is providing both fiber access nodes for the fiber exchange and fiber modems to create a WiFi network across the entire township.

More than 25% of our investments are in the forestry sector or digital solutions. Finnish companies are among the global market leaders in these industries, and there is a continuous flow of innovations within these sectors in Finland. Finnfund’s investments create a growing demand for established and new Finnish companies that can offer solutions that fit our target countries.

We also participate in the EU’s Global Gateway cooperation, which enables the implementation of European companies’ solutions in large projects, especially in Africa and Asia.

Finnpartnership is a business partnership programme financed by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland and managed by Finnfund. With its Business Partnership Support, Finnish companies can research the developing markets, make project and business plans or run pilots for their solutions. Finnpartnership can support companies already active in developing countries, for example, researching investment needs or finding financing partners. The best way to learn about the support available is to participate in monthly application workshops.