December 10 (SeeNews) - The European Investment Bank (EIB) will provide a 30 million euro ($34.2 million) loan to Croatian innovative car company Rimac Automobili under the European Growth Finance Facility (EGFF), the lender said.
The financing will allow the company to further develop its electric driving technologies and will also support its transformation into a technology solutions provider for electric vehicles and an industrial-scale producer of components for the global automotive sector, the EIB said in a statement on Friday.
"Rimac is a great story of success build on determination, vision and innovation and one of the reasons why the EIB exists – to support trail-blazing, innovative companies capable of developing not just themselves but their industries and their communities too," the Vice President of the EIB, Dario Scannapieco, said in a statement.
Enabled by a guarantee form the EU budget, under the Investment Plan for Europe, the funding comes in the form of growth capital loan, under the EGFF, a mechanism launched in 2016, the EIB explained.
"Access to capital was very difficult for us in the early days, with investment activity in this part of Europe being quite low. However, based on our results and accomplishments, more and more international strategic partners such as Porsche, are ready to invest in the company," the founder and CEO of Rimac Automobili, Mate Rimac, said. "We welcome EIB’s initiative to enable later-stage startups to have an alternative to traditional equity investment. This funding will help us accelerate our efforts and scale faster and bigger."
The company has doubled in size over the last 12 months, now employing over 450 people with the majority of them in research and development (R&D). Rimac will also use the loan to accelerate its R&D and increase sales and marketing effort to enable planned expansion into Asia and Europe.
($ = 0.876408 euro)