SWEN Capital Partners’ Blue Ocean closes at €170m

• The Fund harnesses the power of innovation to help tackle three existential threats affecting ocean health today: over-fishing, pollution, and climate change.
• It is the largest VC fund in the world investing for the regeneration of ocean health
• Recognised as a “Top Innovation Fund” by UpLink, the open innovation platform of the World Economic Forum (WEF).

Institutional investors from Europe and the US, ranging from pension funds to insurance companies, banks, sovereign funds and family offices, account for more than 85% of the Fund’s commitments. The most recent funding round saw investments from Abeille Assurances and the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation. Other investors include the insurance firms MACIF and MAIF, the banking group Crédit Mutuel Arkéa, the French Public Investment Bank (Bpifrance), Builders Vision, Ferd, the Planet Ocean Fund and Ifremer (France’s leading ocean research institute).

• The Fund was originally launched in September 2021 in scientific partnership with Ifremer to finance 20 to 25 innovative (primarily start up) companies across sustainable aquaculture, ocean data, plant and cell-based seafood, alternatives to single-use plastic, renewable marine energies and decarbonization of maritime transport.

To date, the Fund has made nine investments*, including:

•  ECOsubsea – the leading provider of environmentally friendly in-water hull cleaning services to the worldwide shipping industry based in Norway
• BIBAK – a French software technology solution making reusable packaging services simpler.
• BlueNav – a French company that develops motorization solutions that convert any boat propelled by combustion engines, into a hybrid electric boat.
• OptoScale – Norwegian technology start-up which developed a solution for accurate and real time fish biomass measurement, health assessment and sea lice counting.
• NatureMetrics – A UK based world-leading provider of biodiversity monitoring solutions, harnessing the power of environmental eDNA surveys and metabarcoding.
• Spinergie – A French software company enabling the maritime transport industry to substantially reduce fuel consumption and carbon emissions through big data analytics.

Peter Bryant, Program Director for Builders Initiative – “We are thrilled with the final close of SWEN’s Blue Ocean fund for the regeneration of ocean health. Builders was one of the first to commit to SWEN because we recognized the potential of the team’s vision for putting capital to work in exciting new ocean businesses, and this final close gives the SWEN team more dry powder to continue its great work in ocean health investing.”

In 2021, SWEN Capital Partners, alongside others such as Ocean Hub Africa, Katapult Ocean and Conservation International Ventures, co-founded the 1000 Ocean Start-ups initiative which is now hosted by the WEF. The coalition brings together incubators, accelerators, matching platforms, and VCs with the collective objective to scale at least 1000 transformative start-ups by the end of the Ocean Decade. It also aims at mainstreaming ocean health investing. SWEN Capital Partners is co-chair the Steering Committee.

In June 2022, the 1000 Ocean Start-ups Coalition developed, with support from SYSTEMIQ, the “Ocean Impact Navigator”, a new open-source impact KPI framework, designed to simplify, harmonise, and strengthen impact measurement and reporting for the Ocean Impact Innovation ecosystem. The tool was created with the aim to help ocean entrepreneurs, their investors, and backers to identify innovations with real impact as well as aggregate and communicate progress towards a sustainable ocean economy.

* the information on the companies is given for information purposes only and does not constitute a recommendation to invest in the companies mentioned