The OnePlanetCapital Climate Change EIS fund had a strong performance in its second year with 400% growth and almost 5m GBP deployed into businesses leading the fight against climate change.
The fund focuses on fast growth businesses that have an impact on climate change across areas such as energy, industry and sustainable retail. The fund went live in 2021 and completed its first raise in March 2022.
Matthew Jellicoe said of the funds performance; “we can really see the key drivers of government regulation, the corporate drive to net zero and growing consumer demand creating massive push factors in this space. It is a very important long-term investment thesis as unfortunately the drivers that underpin the climate crisis are here to stay and the general roadmap for net zero is 2050 and beyond.
“We have already seen strong uplifts in our first tranche of investments as the green economy starts to take shape – and we can really see consumer dynamics changing in B2C demand with businesses such as GoThrift performing very strongly.
“In general, we are happy with the funds’ performance in terms of growth as we have heard from industry sources that 2022 was a harder year for EIS inflows and our growth underpins that fact that our proposition is really resonating with investors both as a growth opportunity and a chance to have an impact.”
In the most recent March deployment, OnePlanetCapital deployed 2 follow-on investments into GoThrift – the fast growth secondhand clothes retailer and Rad Propulsion – an emerging force in maritime electric power trains. New businesses supported included Renew Risk (a provider of fintech SaaS solutions to drive financing & insurance of new renewable energy assets like offshore wind farms.), Airex (climate tech company in the construction industry). Perceptual Robotics (AI drone test and inspection in the renewables space) and TravelTime (a fast growth technology business with strong climate credentials).
This brings the total numbers of investments to 19 across 14 portfolio businesses.
Anthony Chant, Investment Director of OnePlanetCapital, said of the deployment – “we have some great pipeline companies moving into the next phase of growth which we’ve been able to support, as well as adding some really exciting new additions. The sector we target is growing quickly which is enabling us to provide a broad spread of risk and growth opportunities to investors’.”
