Marine wind power developer Norsepower has raised €28m ($30m) in its latest Series C funding round which it will use to scale up production of its Flettner rotor wind sails.
French asset manager Mirova, an affiliate of Natixis Investment Management dedicated to sustainable investment, led the fundraising through its impact private equity Mirova Environment Acceleration Capital fund.
Additional participants in the round included The Finnish Climate Fund Ilmastorahasto, Nefco — The Nordic Green Bank, OGCI Climate Investments, Tesi, and Power Fund III. The last three were already existing investors.
Norsepower, which has delivered or has orders for about 20 rotors over the last eight years, said about 30,000 vessels on the water today could benefit from its sails.
The sails have been used for 250,000 operating hours of verified performance providing fuel consumption savings of 5%-25% measured and analysed by Lloyd’s Register. It added.
The modernised versions of Flettner rotors use a small amount of the ship’s electric power to rotate cylinder-shaped rotors on the deck that with the wind generate powerful thrust to save fuel and cut emissions.
Users have include Bore, Sea-Cargo, Scandlines, Vale, CLdN, Nippon Marine, and Socatra while MOL is among those that have recently said they will fit rotors to a capesize bulker on charter to Brazilian iron ore mining giant Vale.
The investment round, combined with the increased participation of existing investors, “will help accelerate Norsepower’s scale of production and help to meet increasing global demand.
“It will also strengthen Norsepower’s product research & development, marketing, recruitment, and sizeable intellectual property portfolio,” the company said.
Norsepower chief executive Tuomas Riski said the company’s goal is to cut the emissions of large ships by saving fuel.
“Our scale-up ambitions are bold but realistic. It’s a win-win for everyone, including the planet,” he said.
Youssef Belatar, investment director at Mirova, said the investment was its first outside of France as its Environment Acceleration Capital Fund moved to accelerate the scaling of innovative solutions with positive impact.
In January the Finnish Climate Fund said it was making a capital loan of up to €10m to Norsepower for increasing its production capacity.
