Norwegian infrastructure fund Aker to launch 1 billion euros in 2025

The head of the Infrastructure unit at Industry Capital Partners, a Norwegian investment fund for energy transition, backed by Aker ASA industrial group, said that it plans to launch a 1 billion euro ($1.08 billion), inaugural fund in 2019.

Christian Rynning Toennesen, the head of ICP Infrastructure in Oslo said that they were working on energy projects onshore.

He added that the projects were mainly for onshore winds, along with investments in data centers and power grid technologies, and are currently focused in Norway, Sweden. Rynning-Toennesen was the former CEO of Statkraft, a Norwegian energy producer. "Our goal is to create that fund by the first half next year. We must then have a combination real investments and investors going into the fund," he said.

He added that the goal is to raise at least 750 million Euros, but no more than 1 billion, which will be distributed over a maximum six projects.

The CEO of ICP said that ICP has been presenting its plan to potential investors, and is receiving "considerable interest" both from industrial players and pure financial players like pension funds.

The company also entered into a partnership on energy projects with Masdar, the renewable energy company of United Arab Emirates.

Rynning-Toennesen explained that some of the investments were larger than we wanted to make on our own. We could then invest with Masdar.

He added that the first fund will not invest in offshore wind.

We think this is too risky for a fund of this size.

(source: Reuters)