Pollination receives US$20m injection from Mizuho
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The news: Green investment firm Pollination has received a USD20 million ($30.4 million) cash injection from Japanese bank Mizuho as part of a strategic partnership.
The context: The investment will bolster Pollination’s balance sheet and support the growth of its investments and projects business, while building its partnership with Mizuho. The bank will hold a minority stake in Pollination.
Pollination chief executive Martijn Wilder told Capital Brief that finance was key to addressing climate change, given institutional banks’ role in funding large projects. However, a key challenge was getting developing innovations and ideas financed.
Wilder said that a lot of capital being deployed to address climate change was flowing into more conservative investments for later stage projects rather than greenfield projects and early stage ventures.
He also noted that a lot of climate venture funding was focused on climate tech and less on climate hardware and on nature meaning that there was an opportunity to fund these areas.
The partnership follows similar partnerships with ANZ bank in 2022 and the launch of Climate Asset Management — a joint venture with HSBC. The deal comes as Pollination marks its five year anniversary.
The deal with Mizuho will support Pollination's continued expansion across Asia, after it opened an office in Singapore last year.
What they said: “There is far less capital being allocated to innovation and early stage than there is to later stage. But we desperately need innovation. One of the things about Mizuho is that Japan is very focused on the decarbonisation of the Japanese economy and Japanese industrials,” Wilder said.
“Many of those are very active in Australia and things like the ability to do project finance around things like hydrogen and renewables and other large industrial projects is also a key focus. And that's also part of the partnership.
“... There’s a very big link between Japan and Australia and Japanese companies are looking very carefully at how they use Australia as a decarbonisation partner. The Australian Government itself has also been very focused on this with their bilateral agreements with Japan in terms of investment around decarbonisation. So, there is this opportunity for Australia at the moment to really continue that drive forward.”
Mizuho Financial Group’s group chief sustainability officer Yasuhiko Ushikubo, said: “Through this alliance with Pollination, a strong partner, we will support our clients in developing and implementing strategies to deal with these sophisticated problems, and contribute to resolving climate change issues and realising a nature-positive future not only in Asia but the rest of the world as well”.
The source: Pollination
