A London-based sustainable investment provider has closed its Blue Ocean Fund at €170 million, making it the world’s largest VC fund focused on the regeneration of ocean health.

SWEN Capital Partners initially launched the fund in 2021, and closed it this week after exceeding its target size by €50 mln, it announced on Thursday.

“The ocean is one of the main engines of the climate and a sanctuary for biodiversity on our planet. Our fund provides investors with the opportunity to support unique companies that help tackle the climate and biodiversity crisis at a systems level, while targeting competitive market returns,” Christian Lim, the ocean fund’s managing director, said in a press release.

Backers of the Blue Ocean Fund are largely European and American institutional investors, with the most recent funding round including Abeille Assurances and the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation.

To date, the Blue Ocean Fund has invested in nine companies, including NatureMetrics, a UK-based firm using environmental DNA data for biodiversity monitoring purposes.

Its investments also include Norwegian tech start-up OptoScale, which has developed a solution for accurate and realtime fish biomass measurement, health assessment, and sea lice counting, and French software company Spinergie, which uses data analytics to drive fuel consumption and carbon emissions reductions in the marine transport industry.

Other investments it has made involve environmentally friendly in-water hull cleaning services for the shipping industry, simplifying reusable packaging services, and converting boats with combustion engines into hybrid electric boats.

“With this final closing, Blue Ocean is propelled to the forefront and becomes the world’s largest fund dedicated to innovation in marine health,” said SWEN Capital Partners CEO Jerome Delmas.

“Its oversubscription testifies to the growing interest of our investors in this essential field and, more broadly, in SWEN CP’s ESG/impact strategy.”

In the wake of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework agreed in December, financial market experts anticipate huge growth in nature-related start-ups and increased interest in funding them.

By Stian Reklev – stian@carbon-pulse.com

*** Click here to sign up to our weekly biodiversity newsletter ***