Climate advisory firm Pollination agrees to sell a $30m stake to Japan‘s Mizuho

Melbourne-based Pollination has sold a minority stake to Japanese giant Mizuho for $30.4m, opening up growth opportunities in Asia.

Climate investment and advisory company Pollination has sold a minority stake to Japanese giant Mizuho for US$20m ($30.35m) in a deal which opens growth opportunities in Asia.

Pollination has seen sustained growth since its creation just five years ago, and the deal with Mizuho will allow the Melbourne-based company to tap both the client book and resources of Japan’s third largest financial institution.

Pollination chief executive Martijn Wilder said the partnership with Mizuho would allow for a successful symbiotic relationship.

“There is a recognition that Japan has to heavily decarbonise if it wants to remain an industrial powerhouse and Mizuho is focused on being a key financier of that,” Mr Wilder told The Australian.

The deal will allow Pollination to expand its advisory business to Mizuho’s client base. Pollination offers clients net-zero emission pathways, which Mr Wilder said were growth opportunities for Mizuho.

“We can help bring skill sets to help their clients transition, which they can then finance. We are also developing renewable energy projects that will ultimately need project finance and partners, and we can draw on them for that too,” he said.

In July last year, Pollination unveiled its largest renewable energy project. It said it would partner with traditional land owners the MG Corporation and Balanggarra Aboriginal Corporation, and the Kimberley Land Council to develop a 900MW solar farm to produce 50,000 tonnes a year of hydrogen at a new facility in Kununurra in Western Australia.

Once produced, the hydrogen will then be piped to the existing Port of Wyndham.

Pollination did not reveal the size of the stake acquired by Mizuho and the subsequent valuation of the Australian company.

In 2022, ANZ acquired a $US50m stake in Pollination which valued the business at $US350m.

The deal cements yet more growth opportunities for a company that has seen significant expansion.

In 2023, Pollination signed a deal with Indonesia’s sovereign wealth fund to unlock and commercialise carbon credits in Southeast Asia’s largest economy.

Indonesia has moved to allow foreign entities to purchase carbon credits – a potentially lucrative revenue stream for the Asian country as Jakarta is estimated to be home to some 80 per cent of the world’s carbon credits.

Carbon credits are increasingly popular with emitters as they allow the purchaser to offset their own emissions. A growing number of countries are pushing corporations to abate or reduce emissions.

Indonesia hopes to position itself at the epicentre of this demand, and joined with Brazil and the Democratic Republic of Congo at COP27 to form an alliance of tropical rainforest nations, which has been dubbed the “OPEC of the rainforests”.