March 4th, 2019 | Press Releases

Ambienta, Europe’s largest sustainability-focused investment firm, wins Private Equity International Firm of the Year in Italy for the second year in a row

by Ambienta

Ambienta SGR SpA, the largest pan-European firm focused on investing in businesses with a sustainability edge, is pleased to announce that it has been named the 2018 Firm of the Year in Italy in the Private Equity International Awards, for the second year in a row.

The annual Private Equity International Awards are voted on entirely by industry leaders: over 50,000 private equity professionals globally voted in this year’s PEI awards. The publication’s editorial team researched and compiled shortlists of nominations for over 70 categories across three regions this year, open to both generalist and specialist industry players, and announced the winners in the Private Equity International Annual Review on 1 March 2019. Ambienta was shortlisted for the Firm of the Year award together with The Carlyle Group and Investindustrial.

This achievement follows a strong year for Ambienta, during which the firm closed the fundraising of its third fund at EUR 635m, a 96% increase from Fund II. The fund closed after less than three months of active marketing, with demand from Europe and the US well in excess of EUR 1bn. Ambienta also made three new investments in 2018: Pibiplast, a leading player in sustainable packaging solutions for the cosmetics industry; Aromata, a leading producer of natural colors and flavors for the food industry; and Image S, a distributor of machine vision solutions. The firm completed two very successful exits in 2018: the sale of Oskar Nolte in Germany and the exit of Lakesight Technologies, with the latter generating a return of over 10 times and an IRR of over 50% for Ambienta’s investors.

To date, Ambienta’s portfolio companies’ products and services have made a significant impact in relation to the firm’s two key sustainability metrics, resource efficiency and pollution reduction, with a total saving of materials equivalent to the weight of 630,000 SUVs, an amount of energy equivalent to the annual consumption of approximately 4,300,000 refrigerators, and reduced water pollution equivalent to 97x the annual volume of water consumed by New York City.
Nino Tronchetti Provera, Managing Partner and Founder of Ambienta, said “We are privileged to have been recognized by our investors, partners and industry peers for the second year in a row. We have proven that investing in sustainability-driven businesses delivers both top decile financial returns and measured, solid environmental impact: it is investing the way it should be.”