Innogy Venture Capital invests in Belgian Biogas Start-Up GreenWatt
Yesterday, Innogy Venture Capital together with European financial investor Gimv and other partners placed in Brussels their signatures on an agreement to invest in the Belgian company GreenWatt S. A.
- (1888PressRelease) March 10, 2012 - GreenWatt designs, operates and builds turnkey biogas plants for the decentralised generation of renewable heat and power from biodegradable high water content wastes without depending on the addition of slurry. This technology is therefore particularly suitable for the energy recovery from organic wastes and residues from agriculture and the food industry directly at the site of their origin. In total a financing round of EUR six million is planned to finance GreenWatt's international growth. This is the first new investment by Innogy Venture Capital’s fund IRTF I since RWE Innogy and Bankhaus Lampe signed their strategic cooperation agreement last November.
Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt, CEO RWE Innogy, explains: "The distributed renewable production of energy will become increasingly important with the restructuring of the energy supply – therefore we have decided to support GreenWatt. This innovative biogas technology has already been successfully adopted by several customers and, with the additional benefit of avoiding waste disposal costs, these plants are an economically attractive alternative for the agriculture and food industries."
„From our point of view there is a great international market for biogas plants of this size,“ added Detlef Schreiber, CEO of the cooperating company CEE (Conetwork Erneuerbare Energien Holding GmbH & Co. KgaA, Hamburg). „Against the background of rising energy and heat costs the use of self generated energy will become a more and more important factor in the future. We are confident that our investment in GreenWatt will open us good return prospects in this section of technology development.”
The innovative solution developed by GreenWatt involves multi-stage digestion in the absence of oxygen, a process which stands out for its robustness, process stability, yield and flexibility of suitable waste materials. In particular, the plants provide the conditions for a flexible digestion of organic waste materials without the addition of animal manure and using an especially high water content substrate. This makes the technology very suitable for food industry sites. Furthermore, the process residues can be used as bio-fertiliser. Target customers are mainly agricultural operators, food manufacturers, the food trade and sustainable biomass producers. Founded in 2004 as an spin-off of the Belgium's Catholic University of Leuven (UCL), GreenWatt is currently active in the Benelux countries and France and will use the financing to expand globally.
"GreenWatt offers customers in this sector a robust, highly efficient and automated technology with great potential. That’s what convinced us. We are happy to welcome with GreenWatt the first Belgian company in our investment portfolio," sais Crispin Leick, Managing Director of Innogy Venture Capital.
Philippe Mengal, CEO of GreenWatt, commented: "GreenWatt is delighted to welcome Gimv, RWE Innogy and the other partners among its shareholders. After the successful proof of our concept and business model over the last two years, this substantial capital increase will allow us to accelerate the international expansion of GreenWatt. Our new investors will also provide valuable industrial connections to support our growth."
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