Background
Naxicap Partners is a French private equity firm, focused on supporting SMEs and ETIs through small and mid-cap investments. As of December 31, 2024, the firm manages €7.9 billion in Assets Under Management (AUM) across a diversified portfolio spanning multiple industries. As General Partner (GP), Naxicap meets Limited Partners (LPs) and regulators’ growing expectations, as well as its own commitments, by helping portfolio companies develop robust, pragmatic and business-oriented climate strategies.
Context
The transition to a low-carbon economy requires financial institutions not only to measure their own environmental footprint (including Scope 3 Category 15: Financed Emissions) but also to actively support portfolio companies in doing so. For Naxicap, this has resulted in a core requirement: ensuring that each portfolio company understands its impacts by conducting a carbon footprint assessment and identifying pathways to reduce them.
Naxicap initiated its ESG journey in 2015, and since then has continuously developed its ESG approach to abide by the evolving regulatory and market landscape. Since 2023, the firm has reinforced its carbon commitments by mandating that every new investment completes a carbon footprint assessment within 12 months and begins setting GHG emission reduction targets within 24 months. For portfolio companies, however, managing the volume and complexity of data collection and ensuring data reliability demands solutions that are both certified (GHG Protocol, Ademe) and accessible to SMEs with limited resources. Naxicap therefore values service providers who grasp the specific dynamics of Private Equity, understand the operational constraints of smaller companies, and can deliver tools that are at once pedagogical and pragmatic.
Carbometrix' role
Carbometrix has engaged with Naxicap on two main fronts: supporting the management company in assessing GHG emissions from its own operations and assisting several portfolio companies along their carbon journey.
Our specific role includes:
Full Carbon Footprint (FCF) calculation: computing carbon footprint for Naxicap's management company as well as for selected portfolio companies, such as Moria Surgical and Ital Express.
Decarbonization: building decarbonization strategies, including the use of product Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) to identify opportunities for business models evolution when relevant, as illustrated in the Moria case study.
Climate maturity assessment and monitoring (PMDR): in summer of 2025, Naxicap joined the pilot program for our Portfolio Maturity and Decarbonization Roadmap (PMDR) module. This tool provides a standardized, objective framework to assess and communicate the overall climate maturity of an entire Private Equity portfolio (cf. Why is PMDR a game changer for portfolio decarbonization).
Outcome of the collaboration
Our platform and expertise provide Naxicap and its portfolio companies an educational, user-friendly tool combined with analysis that helps shift from simple reporting to actionable levers in the corporate “real world”. We aim to act as a trusted partner, bridging the gap between high-level GP reporting requirements and the operational realities faced by portfolio companies.
The collaboration has delivered outcomes that serve multiple purposes:
Enhanced reporting: certified full carbon footprints, essential for Naxicap's annual ESG reporting and to anticipate the growing demands for CSR and carbon disclosure from portfolio companies.
Portfolio engagement: raising awareness among portfolio companies by helping them understand their impacts and identify actionable levers to reduce them.
Strategic maturity analysis: the PMDR module enabled Naxicap to analyse the climate maturity of its portfolio within a standardised framework, while introducing new data visualization capabilities. This additional layer of analysis supports portfolio steering on decarbonization topics and complements the tools already in use for carbon data consolidation. As a result, Naxicap has gained a structured way to centralise information and to communicate on the climate maturity of its portfolio, both internally and externally.
While the initial carbon footprinting work is a minimum requirement in the climate journey, it lays a solid foundation. Naxicap is positioning itself as a committed decarbonization partner for its portfolio companies, combining ambitious requirements with hands-on support to lower barriers to entry and to initiate credible pathways towards emissions reduction.
Why it matters
The collaboration with Naxicap is central to one of Carbometrix’ core missions: orienting financial flows towards a low-carbon economy. By establishing a robust, science-based system for measuring and acting upon emissions within a major Private Equity firm’s portfolio, we achieve two key impacts:
Standardization and legitimacy: We support a financial company raising the bar on climate responsibility. By providing clear and actionable data, we ensure that their climate strategy goes beyond compliance to deliver genuine impact.
Activating decarbonization: Our projects with companies like Moria Surgical and Ital Express are reminders that the carbon footprint is only the starting point. By following through with actionable transition plans, we help SMEs and ETIs (i) understand their impact but also (ii) implement tangible, lasting emission reductions.
Our mission is to support Naxicap Partners in achieving their climate goal, backed by our science-based approach. We do so by enabling their portfolio companies to understand and take practical actions to achieve their decarbonization plan.