Our clean technology investment strategy

Zouk invests to build global cleantech companies. We focus on growth investments in cleantech companies with proven technologies. For this reason we seek investments in companies with a few million Euros in revenues. Typically, these companies are embarking on an ambitious growth trajectory and require additional equity funding to scale their business. We focus on supporting excellent management teams that aspire to grow their business to the next level. Our experience shows that it is at this stage that companies benefit most from our capital and our advice, resulting in the highest value creation for all parties involved.

The growth capital we invest can be used in multiple ways: to expand production capacities, to enter into new commercial territories, to further innovate around a core product, to strengthen a company’s talent or simply to provide working capital for rapid organic growth. Our overriding objective is to build globally leading technology companies.

Cleantech is largely industrial by nature and companies can consequently have a high capital demand. We select the most capital efficient companies to invest in to maximize the value creation of our investment. We like to invest on a fully-funded basis to allow our management teams to focus their energies on doing what they know best: building successfull technology companies on the back of intelligent funding. This means we will generally provide sufficient capital to support a company’s growth plans through to cash-flow breakeven or to an exit. Typically, Zouk invests €5-20 million of growth equity per company over the course of an investment. If a company requires a higher amount of funds to meet its growth objectives, we will invite trusted co-investors to a transaction.

Our investment horizon extends over 3-5 years, at the end of which we will work with management and shareholders to realise value through a trade sale or a listing. At this point, the experience of our team is critical: we will help select the appropriate exit strategy and introduce the right partners on the buy-side and the sell-side of a transaction.

Investment scope

Cleantech spans many sectors and is constantly developing through innovation. We are interested in any technology that provides a net resource efficiency benefit. To us, the sector includes:

Alternative and renewable energy technologies, including solar, wind, biomass, geothermal, hydro, biofuels, fuel cells

Resource efficiency technologies, including smart grid, energy efficiency, energy storage, CHP, building envelope, transportation technologies, recycling  

Environmental services and technologies, including waste management, water, carbon capture and storage, carbon management, advanced materials