EU funding

The financing of the Dutch life sciences company is supported by the European Commission under its InvestEU programme. Lumicks aims to impact more than one million lives by 2027.

The organisations launched a set of recommendations to boost impact investing in the European Parliament this week, calling for closer collaboration between public, private and philanthropic actors to maximise impact.

Danish company MATR Foods has signed a €20m loan agreement with the European Investment Bank to expand production of its clean label plant-based meat alternatives.

Spanish impact investor CREAS has raised €40m at first close for its €70m Creas Impacto II fund and announced its first two investments.

The fund will provide unitranche funding to French and European SMEs, while encouraging the companies they finance to take account of environmental and social concerns.

The Polestar Capital Circular Debt Fund is now closed with €240m in capital which will be used to finance 30 circular projects in the Netherlands.

The fund seeks to alleviate poverty and boost entrepreneurship in the region and it is London-based M&G’s second investment into an impact-driven public private partnership (PPP) model.

Ahead of the European elections, Impact Europe and five national impact investing networks have launched their Impact Manifesto, calling on the EU to introduce policies to enable the work of impact investors.

The private credit fund has received €20m from the European Investment Fund to support agricultural SMEs looking to decarbonise their businesses in Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Portugal.

The company, which makes electrolysers for hydrogen production, is targeting rapid expansion of installations to meet a forecast sharp rise in demand for green hydrogen, as countries strive to meet net-zero targets.