Metallkraft attracts € 17 Million as Climate Change Capital enters Nordic Cleantech

Norwegian company Metallkraft has a new part owner in one of our most recent members - Climate Change Capital, the UK based cleantech fund now making their first (but I imagine not last…) entry into the Nordic cleantech space. The € 200 million cleantech fund led the investment round and subscribed to € 10.3 million of the total € 17 million in convertible bonds that where issued. Current owners also took part.

Metallkraft is an interesting company in many ways. They have the cleantech industry (solar) as their main customer and their business idea is to improve the environmental performance of the customer.

Metallkrafts business is recycling the slurry that is used in the wafer cutting process when you make solar panels. The slurry needs to continously be replaced with fresh slurry and disposed of in an environmentally sound way. For an industry living off its environmental benifits this for sure needs to be dealt with in an environmentally harmless way. Metallkraft recycles the slurry retaining its cutting abilities without adding any chemicals. Needless to say perhaps, but the cost of recycling is far lower than buying the slurry fresh and simply paying for disposal of the used batch. I like the company also for the reason that it exemplifies what happens when a company in one country and industry makes it big. Suppliers and other actors surrounding the big company tend to gain as well – which means that successful cleantech growth leads to more cleantech growth… Metallkraft is one of several promising and fast growing companies in or related to the solar industry that are now emerging in Norway, many of them in the surge of REC, and I am sure we will see more international leaders among them.

It should be said that Metallkrafts solution is not the only thing that convinced Climate Change Capital to invest. As Simon Drury of Climate Change Capital points out: We firmly believe that Metallkraft’s management team is one of the best we have seen and in my experience this is the most important investment factor to get right”. So naturally, the right team needs to be in place, and I think Simon states the mind of many of his colleagues in that quote.