News Index

Search for news:

Japanese Contaminated Land Fund to be Introduced

Reuters, published in the International Herald Tribune

7 April, 2005

A Japan fund to turn pollution fight into profit

Green Earth, a Tokyo-based investment company, is preparing to introduce a fund that seeks to help Japan clean up its polluted sites and is aimed at institutions interested in so-called socially responsible investments. The company expects to introduce the Ecoland fund by May and hopes to raise as much as ¥8 billion, or $74 million, according to Toshio Fukuda, president of Green Earth. It is aiming for 10 investments worth ¥500 million to ¥1 billion each in the first year.

The fund, which will buy land polluted by industrial activity, will then clean it up and sell it for residential or commercial use. It thereby seeks to push into a budding soil cleanup industry estimated to be worth at least ¥100 billion a year.

"Many Japanese investors have become aware of the need to be socially responsible and environmentally aware," said Fukuda, who for nine years until last year was president of Credit Suisse Asset Management in Japan.

To read  the rest of this article see:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/04/06/business/gflede.php

For a useful overview of the contaminated land industry in Japan see:
Canadian Chamber of Commerce article: Overview of Japan's Soil Remediation Market
http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/epic/internet/inimr-ri.nsf/en/gr-73100e.html

Land Solutions Inc
http://www.landsolution.co.jp/pdf/ls_profile.pdf