PORTUGAL BLUE: a new initiative for blue economy investments

The EIF and the Portuguese national promotional institution, Banco Português de Fomento (“BPF”; formerly known as “Instituição Financeira de Desenvolvimento (IFD)”), launched PORTUGAL BLUE, a €50 million equity partnership to support Portuguese companies active in the area of blue economy. 

The EIF and BPF each contributed EUR 25 million to this joint programme, which is expected to catalyse over EUR 75 million of investments into funds and final beneficiary companies. The aim is to crowd in the additional resources from private investors, and commit the funding into up to two funds focused on blue economy with a climate impact and sustainable development objective.

PORTUGAL BLUE wants to help foster the Portuguese blue economy ecosystem by providing funding to start-ups, SMEs, and midcaps at every stage of development by accessing access early-stage, venture-, growth- and expansion equity capital.

Furthermore, our initiative aims to build local capacity by supporting emerging fund managers that focus a significant part of their investments on companies operating in blue economy sectors in Portugal. Hence, selected venture capital and private equity funds/teams will also be based or located in Portugal.

PORTUGAL BLUE is the third equity partnership – following Portugal Tech and Portugal Growth – between the EIF and BPF under the EIF-NPI Equity Platform and the Investment Plan for Europe’s implementation in cooperation with EU National Promotional Institutions.

The BPF funding made available under this collaboration is co-financed by the Portuguese Ministry of Sea with resources from Fundo Azul.