Marek Garniewski: We want to help scale start-ups

Among Orlen’s various business areas, a fund has emerged in recent months that wants to invest €100 million over next ten years in technology companies offering breakthrough solutions. What industries are you most interested in?

The VC fund began its operational activities at the end of 2021. This tool supplements our Group’s innovation ecosystem, which also includes a research and development centre, accelerator, and acquisition activities.

The industries that comprise the portfolio of the fund are the same as our long-term strategy Orlen2030. We are interested in what will help us transform the capital group and multiply revenues and profits in future. Today, the technologies of interest are either at a very early stage of development or need support in scaling them up. These are technologies that complement our current operations, improving the efficiency of our existing assets, but also those that support the group’s future business lines. These include, for example, the Internet of Things solutions, Industry 5.0, cyber security, materials technologies, solutions for energy, especially in the renewable energy sector, as well as the digitalisation of industry and what is needed to build modern retail.

We are planning to have new production assets by the end of the decade, for which we are already looking at innovative solutions for recycling, hydrogen technology, and biofuels, among other things.

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Marek Garniewski: Chcemy pomagać skalować działalność start-upów

Interesuje nas to, co pomoże nam transformować Grupę Orlen i zwielokrotniać przychody oraz zyski w przyszłości – mówi Marek Garniewski, dyrektor inwestycyjny Orlen VC.

Which stage of development of young companies interests you the most?

We are most interested in the so-called Round A stage. We are talking about entities that already have the technology, have a finished product, and sell it commercially and record first revenues. We are a fund that, by design, wants to help scale the operations of such start-ups and, when possible, also use their technology as a client.

In addition to the financial aspect, we are looking for opportunities to support start-ups with our group’s resources. We have unique assets on which we can conduct pilot programmes, utilise the group’s know-how and experts in many fields, or facilitate access to new markets.

What do you predict as the time horizon for supporting start-ups?

VC funds are typically characterised by a ten-year term. The same is true for us. We have the option to extend the fund for another two years. Assuming disbursement of funds over a period of about three-four years, we can assume that involvement in a single start-up can last as long as seven-eight years.

You have already announced the first investment. It involves subscribing to a new issuance of ICsec stocks on your own. Why did you choose this particular company?

ICsec is an entity from Poland, the first in which we have invested directly. ICsec in our opinion is a technologically mature and unique solution in Europe, and addresses a huge and extremely important market. We have experience using competing solutions, and in our opinion ICsec’s technology is able to compete with them. This is a very unique solution used to detect cyberattacks. Similar cyber security solutions for OT systems are being developed mainly in two centres – the United States and Israel. Smaller players are prominent in Europe.

ICsec has the software and hardware background to also support critical infrastructure at home and abroad. They already have their first customers. In our opinion, we are able to help them grow. Our experts have a very rich experience in this area. The synergies were obvious. The group of shareholders who have previously invested in the company includes experienced investors who are highly regarded for their professionalism. We think this is a very good investment.

There are also other investments already in place. Can you disclose them?

It’s not a big secret. We made two foreign direct investments at the end of August. Several million euros each. The first is a company from Austria – Eologix Sensor Technology – and its sensor, base, and software solution that measures and optimises the behaviour of onshore and offshore wind turbines. The company has very good customers, among whom we can highlight industry leaders, such as GE and Vestas.

These sensors improve the efficiency of wind turbines and can be installed on assets already in operation. The pilot programme will be carried out on our onshore windmills and we hope that in a few years it will be applied to our offshore wind farms as well.

The second investment is Invert Robotics, a company from Ireland but with roots in New Zealand and Australia. It specialises in the automation of industrial inspection processes, such as tanks, using proprietary robots.

We have targeted a couple of things here, the first being cost. We have thousands of such tanks that need to be inspected regularly. These are millions of zlotys per year. At the same time, this is a very dangerous part of maintenance work. For the inspection, the tanks must be properly prepared in advance, scaffolding erected, and then the technician performs the inspection. However, this can be accomplished with robots, which in the case of Invert Robotics have a unique patented solution that allows the examination of surfaces other than just ferromagnetic. They have quite a lot of success in this area, and among their many clients there are companies like Danone, Roche, Bayer, just to name a few.

How can young companies that think they offer a product or service that might interest Orlen VC contact you?

Due to our short tenure in the start-up environment, we are not very recognisable, but I believe this will change in a while. Start-ups are keeping a watchful eye on Polish VC activity. Many of them come to us through online channels. On orlen.pl, you can find information about the fund itself and contact us. We are also active at many industry events.

In the last six months, we analysed more than 300 start-ups from Poland. Today, we rather approach start-ups than the start-ups to us. Yet, we are not able to reach everywhere. There are single entities that contact us and are very interesting. Most often they are at too early a stage of development for us, but it’s still worth contacting and seeing what cooperation with us might look like.

We do not give up on start-ups that are not yet ready for our investment policy. Over the next three to four years, we want to spend nearly 500 million zlotys, so they have time to get to the Round A or later stages, where we can get involved. Perhaps we will be a fund that will help several Polish start-ups go abroad and realise further investment rounds with investors from Europe or the United States.