Climate Fund – €6 million capital loan to Infrakit for the development and commercialisation of sustainability functionalities for boosting emissions reductions in infrastructure building

The Finnish Climate Fund has decided on a capital loan of up to 6 million euros to Infrakit Group Oy for the development of sustainability functionalities in their data management service, as well as for boosting the software’s international deployment. Improving the efficiency of transport and the utilisation of machines and materials can reduce the emissions of infrastructure construction sites by an estimated 5%.

Infrastructure building refers to the construction of, for example, transport routes, logistics centres, energy infrastructure or industrial structures. The sector’s annual emissions in Finland are approximately 1.4 Mt CO2eq, of which roughly 55% is generated by the fuel consumption of machinery and vehicles.

Infrakit offers data management services for infrastructure projects, particularly for reducing the duration and costs of construction. ”Until now, we have been able to promise our customers savings of approximately 20% in overall infrastructure building costs by improving the efficiency of operations with our service. Many projects have also been completed ahead of schedule, like the 70-million-euro project on Highway 3. Now we want to bring the same benefits to sustainability”, says Infrakit’s CEO, Teemu Kivimäki.

Infrakit’s sustainability function will offer more precise information and tools for boosting emissions reductions to construction companies and infrastructure managers in Finland and abroad. The service lets its users leverage climate and environmental data as well as measure and anticipate the emissions generated by their operations.

”Infrakit’s comprehensive data management service is one way of boosting the sustainability perspective in the construction sector. For example, cities and municipalities could use the service to set requirements and goals for builders regarding their emissions. Our investment accelerates the growth of an emissions-reducing solution and enables the development of new sustainability functionalities”, says CEO Paula Laine of the Climate Fund, shedding light on the reasons behind the investment decision.

Infrakit’s solution

Infrakit Group Oy is a company established in 2010 that offers cloud-based data management services to infrastructure construction sites. Infrakit’s solution has already been used in over 3,000 Finnish and international projects worth more than 30 billion euros in total.

The emissions reductions achieved by Infrakit are indirect: its technology enables the recognition of emissions but the ultimate emissions reductions depend on the corrective action taken by the company’s customers instead of directly from the technology or product of the company being financed. Infrakit’s data-based management features offer tools for determining the customer’s carbon footprint, monitoring actual emissions and optimising emissions during the project’s implementation. By using this data, Infrakit’s customers are able to decrease their emissions.

The project’s estimated emissions reduction potential is based on the improvement in infrastructure building efficiency achieved by the data model platform provided by the company, which can for example reduce the fuel consumption of machinery at the construction site. The magnitude of the emissions reductions achieved in a single infrastructure building project is approximately 0.6 kt CO2eq. If Infrakit’s business plan succeeds, its ten-year cumulative emissions-reduction potential is approximately 3 Mt CO2eq. The emissions-reduction benefits brought by the new sustainability functionality currently under development would be realised in addition to this estimate, but the assessment of their magnitude involves uncertainties, so they have not been included in the emissions-reduction estimate above. The project targets markets both in Finland and abroad but Infrakit believes that most of its growth will be achieved abroad.

The total investments in the company’s growth and development plan in the next few years are estimated at €12.6 million, consisting of the Climate Fund’s capital loan, €5 million in equity funding from one of the company’s current shareholders and grants from Business Finland and the Centre for Economic Development, Transport and the Environment.

The Climate Fund’s capital loan of up to €6 million has a convertibles option and will be allocated to the development of an emissions-reducing functionality and the acceleration of the software’s international deployment. The interest on the Climate Fund’s capital loan is priced at the market rate and the capital loan also includes a conversion right.

For additional information, please contact:
Saara Mattero, Director, Communications and Sustainability, tel. +358 400 114 777 saara.mattero@ilmastorahasto.fi

Anssi Johansson, VP of Marketing, tel. +358 40 592 9933, anssi.johansson@infrakit.com

The Finnish Climate Fund is a Finnish state-owned special-assignment company. Its operations focus on combating climate change, boosting low-carbon industry and promoting digitalisation. The Climate Fund invests in large-scale projects in which the fund’s investment is crucial to enable the project’s realisation in the first place, on a larger scale or earlier than it would with funding from elsewhere.

Infrakit – Your digital transformation partner. Infrakit is an industry-disrupting digital platform to increase infrastructure construction productivity. We are driven by the goal of a sustainable infra industry – while offering 20% savings in total project costs. Our customers include the most advanced construction companies and infrastructure owners in the world. We have been helping our customers to digitalize their infra projects since 2010 – over 30 billion euros of infra assets has been built with Infrakit in more than 3000 projects in 13 countries.