Despite the fact that Spain has slowed down investment in renewables due to the energy reform, there is still movement in the sector. This week, Cerberus, one of the world's largest venture capital firms, has backed a Spanish company, Renovalia Energy. In addition, Repsol has announced the finalists of its incubation programme.
The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and the Environment has drawn up the National Agri-Food and Forestry Innovation and Research Programme to support innovation in the sector. The agri-food sector is facing a crucial challenge for society: the demand for food must be met on a global scale, in a planet that is becoming increasingly populated and subject to the effects of climate change.
After several years of crisis in which the lack of financing made it impossible to complete buyout operations, last year foreign investors began to regain confidence in Spain and started to divest, with significant capital gains for the investors involved.
Faced with the difficulty biotech companies have in finding both private and public funding, they are turning to crowdfunding. This year, Spain has created the first European platform and the second worldwide for biotech crowdfunding. Although the operations closed in Spain are still of a small amount, operations closed in biotechnology in other parts of the world, such as that of Cell Therapheutics for almost €1M, show that it is a form of financing that will eventually have a significant impact on the sector. In addition, the public sector has also launched a crowdfunding platform in the biotech sector.
Venture capital rounds in the ICT sector in July follow the trend we saw in the last InvestmentReport in March, where the average deal size had increased from €1M to €2M from March 2014 to March 2015. In the month of July there have been a number of deals in excess of €4M. Below we highlight some of the deals completed this month.
Analysing the M&A operations in the industrial sector that have taken place in June, it is worth highlighting the investments made in Spanish companies in the packaging sector with different materials. In addition, several of the investors have been foreigners such as DS Smith or Duravent, which reflects the confidence in the Spanish packaging sector. According to the sector barometer Hispack Packaging Trends, 70% of Spanish companies in the sector will increase their turnover this year and almost a quarter of the companies estimate a growth of more than 10%.
The CDTI is contributing to the development of biotechnology in our country. In the last half of 2014 alone, more than 40 biotechnology-related projects received CDTI funding. In addition, the Cdti also supports private funding and in May 2015 injected €5M in Inveready Innvierte Biotech II.
According to a report by RobecoSAM, the water business is a $600 billion market globally and is growing between 1% and 2% faster than global GDP. In Spain, spending is around €7,000 M. Water services, such as household supply, account for 55% of this total; wastewater treatment 38% and water for industry 6%. Although we are below the European average, Spain has companies that want to grow and achieve a leading position in the market. In recent months we have seen companies such as hidráulicas Jimol and Hydromodel receive funding for this purpose.
Foreign biotechs are interested in Spanish companies. Gesgenéricos has been bought by Israel's Altan Pharma and the Basque company OWL has granted Galmed an option to buy up to 19.9 % of the company.
In recent months we have seen how companies in the food sector have made acquisitions with the aim of growing in their sector and positioning themselves as benchmark brands. This is the case of Europastry, which has decided to increase its stake in the American company Wenner, and Valls Companys, which has made two acquisitions in the ham sector in Spain in the last two months.
Venture capital is active in the tourism sector. If we recently mentioned that the Hotusa group had decided to create a fund for technological and innovative startups focused on the hotel and tourism sector, in this post we comment on the operations that have been carried out in the sector recently.
Línea Directa de Innovación is a financing programme promoted by the CDTI and the Technology Fund, which aims to support business projects that involve the incorporation and adaptation of new technologies at a sectoral level and that represent a competitive advantage for the company. Technological adaptation actions aimed at the introduction of new markets will also be financed.