BeCitizen, a Belgium-based consultancy, has helped local private equity (PE) firm BeCapital raise €148.3m ($200m) in its debut fund in clean-tech.
Alongside BeCitizen, Cobepa and La Compagnie Benjamin de Rothschild, BeCapital has commitments from mostly European families with industrial backgrounds.
Alexandre Schmitz (pictured), chief executive of BeCapital and a member of the executive committee of Cobepa, said: "We can lever the combined networks of our initiators (CBR, BeCitizen and Cobepa) and our key investors to provide strategic introductions and key market insights in a variety of sectors across Europe and the Mediterranean Rim.
"Our management team consists in experienced PE professionals and cleantech experts from BeCitizen, which skill-wise enables us to support the company both on financial/strategy matters and on key operating topics."
BeCapital’s approach is based on the principles of Positive Economy, a framework developed by BeCitizen, which says economic growth can only be sustained if it preserves and restores the environment and natural resources.
BeCapital’s investment strategy is to support the development of small and medium-sized companies in agriculture, construction, power & energy, environmental services, transportation and industrial applications.
BeCapital has already completed four investments: Northern Power Systems (a US-based next generation wind turbine company), Helveta (a UK-based global market leader in timber tracking and tracing platforms), Goëmar (a French firm extracting molecules from algae to develop value added products with agricultural applications) and, more recently, Pavatex (the leading European supplier of high-quality wood fibre insulation systems, based in Switzerland).