Exclusive: Ambienta holds €250m interim close

Ambienta, an Italy-based firm focused on pan-European investments in the environmental sector, has held a €250 million interim closing for its second fund, PEI has learnt.

The fund, which came to market last June targeting €300 million, held the closing last week, according to a source familiar with the matter. The firm is expected to hold a €300 million final close in the summer.

Rede Partners is helping Ambienta with the fundraise, the source added. Both Rede and Ambienta declined to comment.

The interim closing comes after Ambienta collected two-thirds of its target size last December, when the firm held a €200 million second close. The firm held a €145.2 million first close last October, which was more than it has planned for the first close, Nino Tronchetti Provera, founder and managing partner at Ambienta, told PEI at the time.

The fundraising is going “very well”, due to the firm’s industrial-focused strategy, according to the source. Ambienta aims to capitalise on the growing markets for businesses focused on energy and resource efficiency, waste management and pollution, and renewable energy services.

“We have two hubs in Germany and Italy where most industrial businesses are located. Approximately 85 percent of the revenues of our companies are outside their home countries and more than 50 percent of their revenues are coming from outside of Europe, where growth is happening,” Nino Tronchetti Provera, founder and managing partner at Ambienta, told Private Equity International last October.

The firm’s second fund will be significantly larger than Ambienta’s debut fund, which closed in 2009 on €217 million. So far, Ambienta has made one divestment from Fund I. Last July, it sold Tower Light, a business that makes lighting towers for construction sites to an American trade buyer. The company had a 30 percent growth rate, with 90 percent of the sales coming outside of Italy and a big chunk coming outside of Europe. “It delivered an internal rate of return in triple digits,” Tronchetti Provera told PEI earlier.