'This didn't really exist before': The impact debt fund working with VCs to bridge the scale-up gap
18 May 2026
12:53
Impact investing has a well-documented problem at the scale-up stage: too many promising companies, not enough capital to build their first commercial plant.
One Dutch fund thinks the answer is private credit – and almost nobody else in Europe is doing it.
We sat down with Benedetta Garofalo and Ward Heij from Colesco Capital's circular credit fund to discuss:
→ Why private credit for impact barely exists as an asset class in Europe
→ How the fund uses VCs as an 'origination engine'
→ Where the scale-up funding gap is most acute
→ Which sectors C4IF is betting on next
One Dutch fund thinks the answer is private credit – and almost nobody else in Europe is doing it.
We sat down with Benedetta Garofalo and Ward Heij from Colesco Capital's circular credit fund to discuss:
→ Why private credit for impact barely exists as an asset class in Europe
→ How the fund uses VCs as an 'origination engine'
→ Where the scale-up funding gap is most acute
→ Which sectors C4IF is betting on next
Ask a climate tech founder how they plan to finance their first commercial plant and the answer is usually the same: grants, equity, and then bank debt. Private credit rarely features.
But that financing structure is exactly what Benedetta Garofalo and Ward Heij spend their working lives promoting as a bridge to help scale-ups fund first-of-a-kind (FOAK) plants and other capex-intensive clean tech projects.