A partnership of Chinese and European investors say they are hoping to channel EUR 2 billion (USD 2.3 billion) into making ocean industries sustainable and decarbonising the marine sector.
The China-EU Blue Forward Fund was launched on 7 November during this year’s Xiamen International Ocean Week conference, hosted in the coastal city in south-eastern China’s Fujian province.
The fund was initiated by the Fujian Ocean Innovation Centre in collaboration with French venture capital firm Seventure Partners and other investors, reported Fujian Daily. It aims to speed up marine technology commercialisation and foster cooperation between Chinese and European partners in the blue economy. The Fujian Ocean Innovation Centre (also known as the Lujiang Innovation Laboratory) was established in 2024 by the local government, Xiamen University and China’s Third Institute of Oceanography, which is part of the Ministry of Natural Resources.
The first phase of spending for this fund will be a round of investments from a pot worth EUR 200 million (USD 230 million). Those in charge of the fund have been asked to focus on sustainable marine industries and technological innovation. That remit spans marine information systems and digital tools, the blue-carbon economy and the decarbonisation of traditional marine sectors.
Further areas for investment will include deep-sea equipment and biomanufacturing, marine robotics, biological products, seawater technologies, new marine materials, and projects focused on marine pollution control and ecological restoration.
According to the Fujian Ocean Innovation Centre’s funding guidelines, its research priorities include climate change, marine disasters, biodiversity, and ecological and environmental benefits. Seventure Partners is a part of BPCE Group, a French banking major. Seventure makes some of Europe’s biggest investments in life sciences and sustainability-related innovation.
According to Science and Technology Daily, experts who attended a China-Europe Blue Development Investment seminar during Xiamen’s ocean conference said this kind of international collaboration is essential, given the ecological fragility and cross-border nature of the blue economy. They also pointed to the complementary strengths of Chinese and European technology, markets and regulatory systems.
As reported by Fujian Daily, the creation of this fund follows a series of exchanges between Chinese and European institutions during the third UN Ocean Conference in June. Dai Minhan, chair professor of marine environmental science at Xiamen University and director of the Fujian Ocean Innovation Centre, said the two sides had held months of discussions on blue finance and the marine technology value chain; the signing marks a continuation of those talks.
Participants of the seminar suggested the fund should take a long-term approach, reported Science and Technology Daily: the development of shared standards and due diligence mechanisms would help ensure the money becomes “a bridge linking innovative enterprises with industrial value chains”.