Cleantech comp entrants attract $113m in investment

The Australian Cleantech Competition closed this week and received nearly 100 entries from the country’s leading cleantech companies.

The entrants are vying to win one of the 30 spots on the Cleantech Business Accelerator Program that will help them to make a step change in their business and take their innovative products to Australian customers and the world.

The entrants employ a total of over 700 people so are mainly still small companies. However, they have jointly had total investment of $113m, with $64m of that coming from third party investors.

It is great to see so many high quality companies seeing value in this initiative. We have a seen a definite increase in the quality of entrants this year and it is going to be a real challenge for the judges to get this down to just 30 companies. The stiff competition will mean that the Top 30 are all going to of an extremely high calibre.

The location of the most entries was NSW with 29 companies entering, followed by Victoria with 26, South Australia with 15, Queensland with 11 and Western Australia with 10. The entrants nominated themselves into one of six categories as shown in the table below. The three most popular categories were Renewable Energy, Air, Water & Waste and Energy Efficiency.

This year the competition has teamed up a number of industry associations to provide better access for the Top 30 companies into sectors such as Food & Beverage, Manufacturing, Mining and the Built Environment. This has led to the formation of five new sector awards to celebrate excellence in each of the sectors. As shown in the table below, Renewable Energy, Built Environment and Manufacturing were the sectors with the greatest level of self-nominations.

The Top 30 Companies will be announced in two weeks after the judges have considered each of the entrants. The Top 30 will then get two months of mentoring before having to submit business plans for further judging. The Winner of the overall competition and the five sector awards will be announced at a gala dinner in Sydney on 2 October. The Australian Winner will represent the company in the Global Competition in November.

In addition, the Winners and others in the Top 30 will attend a trade mission to Hong Kong, China and Singapore to meet with potential partners, customers and investors.

John O’Brien is Managing Director of Australian CleanTech, a research and broking firm that advises cleantech companies, investors and governments, works across Australia, China, Korea and Malaysia. Australian CleanTech manages the Australian Clean Technologies Competition on behalf of the Australian Department of Industry and Innovation. See www.cleantechcomp.com.au for more details.