Norway - in a state of cleantech expansion!

Following the trend of 2009, the first four months show Norway in the lead among the Nordic countries. The biggest five cleantech investments during 2010 were all attracted by Norwegian companies. Wafer cutting slurry recycling company Metallkraft, electric vehicle company THINK and silicon carbide manufacturer Norstel are top three so far.

It was evident already during 2009 that a lot of the expansion deals came out of Norway. Half of all investments in Norway during the year were expansion deals. This attracts international capital, since most of the actors need a bigger investment to motivate going into a foreign market. Good Energies, Climate Change Capital, Environmental Technologies Fund, for instance, all found attractive deals in Norway during the year, in (respectively) solar company Norsun, above mentioned Metallkraft, and Kebony - the company that manages to give ”common” wood the properties of the kind of hardwood typically found in rainforests.

So how come Norway manages to attract both most money and most international capital among the Nordic countries? Come to the Cleantech Capital Day in Oslo event and find out, I am tempted to say, as the answer is likely to emerge during the event. But a few key factors can be pointed to even in a short article...

- The success of REC. Over-obvious as it may be, it does help to have an engine both in terms of providing a home customer to new cleantech companies supplying or having the solar industry as customers, such as Innotech Solar and SiPro. REC was also the starting point for some of the entrepreneurs who are now spreading both money and entrepreneurial spirit across the Norwegian cleantech industry. Among these individuals are Alf Bjørseth who now runs Scatec where he invests in new energy and material companies; Jan-Olaf Willums who took over and re-started EV-company THINK and Reidar Langmo who is a founding partner and CEO of Novus Energy Partners, a transatlantic investment fund going into cleantech.

- Availability of funding and support. Investinor, Scatec, Sarsia Seed, Enova, Hafslund Ventures, Trönder Energi Invest, Northzone, Energy Future Invest, Statkraft, Innovasion Norge, Incitia Ventures and OREEC all in different ways support the growing Norwegian cleantech industry, either through funding it, through testing new cleantech solutions such as Statkraft is doing in their Osmotic Power Prototype or through investing such as recently established Investinor.

- Dealflow. It goes without saying but we’ll say it anyway, there needs to be a pipeline of attractive opportunities in order for investments to take place. Clearly this has been the case in Norway, particularly in the commercialisation/expansion stages. Interestingly enough is that quite a few of the deals that have happened during this year in Norway were in the seed stages, so a new generation of success stories might be underway. A lot of companies emerge in solar related businesses, but Norway has a broad base of innovation activity in wind, wave, materials and other areas. The Norwegian Cleantech Award at our upcoming event aims to highlight five of these. Check them out now before you reed about them as the coming years top investments!

Naturally, not all is green in Norway and the picture we paint here is in many ways a small part of the Norwegian corporate landscape but a lot of signs seem to point to that times there are changing.
Make sure you don’t miss the next top five deals!

Alexander Lidgren,
Cleantech Scandinavia