Germany-based energy utility EnTrade Group is buying for an undisclosed amount Agnion Energy, a local company converting wood into synthetic natural gas (Bio-SNG), electricity and heat in decentralized plants backed by trade peer Waste Management (WM).
The deal is WM’s first corporate venturing exit and Joe Vaillancourt, vice-president of WM’s organic growth group venture investing, by email said: “We actually have four exits underway. It has been a pretty busy year.”
EnTrade said after restructuring operations had been completed Agnion Energy would be integrated into Entrade Energiesysteme.
Agnion had raised €35m ($45m) from Waste Management and venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Wellington Partners and Munich Venture Partners.
In May 2011, Agnion Energy raised an undisclosed amount from WM Organic Growth, a corporate venturing subsidiary of US-listed garbage disposal provider Waste Management (WM), and the three VC firms.
Agnion’s core technology involved was devised 10 years ago at the Technical University of Munich, and then developed for the market as the ‘Heatpipe Reformer’ (HPR) by Agnion together with Prof. Dr.-Ing. Jürgen Karl, Professor of Energy Process Engineering at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, and his team.