Ambienta SGR SpA, which invests in energy efficiency, will debut a $406 million private equity fund meant to leverage growing U.S. demand for energy-saving natural-gas burners and generators, Bloomberg reported.
Called the Ambienta II fund, it will invest in European companies capable of marketing their gas technologies abroad, as well as firms that restrain water waste and control pollution, Nino Tronchetti Provera, CEO of the Milan-based firm, said in the Bloomberg report.
The fund, which is aiming for $135 million in its first phase, by June, plans to invest some $27 million in each company. Tronchetti Provera noted that businesses which the earlier Ambienta I fund targeted recorded on average a 26% sales gain last year, while adding 460 jobs in the past four years.
Ambienta is leveraging a larger investments trend – as are firms such as the Wheb Group and Ludgate Investments Ltd. – centered on finding ways to capitalize on the expanding usage of energy-efficient products as mushrooming populations exhaust limited resources, Bloomberg reported, noting that “the U.S. has become the biggest natural-gas producer after expanding shale drilling, boosting demand for gas-consuming products such as boilers and pumps that were first developed in Europe.”
“The continent that has pioneered utilization of natural gas for applications such as automotives, heating and cooling is Europe,” Tronchetti Provera said in an interview in London as noted by Bloomberg. “Given the Americas don’t have these technologies, it’s going to be a big area of potential growth for European companies.”
Ambienta II will also focus on European companies that reduce water waste through the use of pipe upgrades, recycling and filtration, as well as companies that produce electronics equipment, such as adaptors, inverters and transformers, he said in the Bloomberg report.
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