Supply Side: Nordic Unmanned, Cummins
Written by Carolina Worrell, Senior Editor
Nordic Unmanned collaborates with BNSF Railway (BNSF) to test the Staaker Railway Drone. Also, Cummins Advocating for Racial Equity (CARE) invests in a sustainable future through partnership with Reinventure Capital.
Nordic Unmanned
Norway-based drone provider Nordic Unmanned announced on Sept. 7 that it has signed an initial collaboration agreement with BNSF to test the Staaker Railway Drone for infrastructure inspection and general data acquisition.
One of the main tasks of the project, Nordic Unmanned says, will be to merge the current railway technology with the railway drone. According to the company, the current system for data acquisition in the railway industry is heavy and requires a lot of resources to implement efficiently, “hence implementing the [Staaker] Railway Drone, [which] will represent an innovative way of collecting data.”
The drone is a flexible data acquisition platform, and one of the aims of the first-phase contract with BNSF is to further develop the solution and its use cases, Nordic Unmanned adds.
“This contract is a breakthrough for the Staaker Railway drone and for Nordic Unmanned, as it is the first rail customer in the U.S.,” said Nordic Unmanned ASA Chief Revenue Officer Cecilie Drange. The disruptive nature of the Staaker Railway drone allows clients access to new and improved data regularly. We see a lot of opportunities in the future for this platform, and we are proud to be working with an innovative and forward-thinking corporation, such as BNSF.”
Founded in 2014, The Nordic Unmanned Group is an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) for Staaker, AirRobot and DroneMatrix, with offices in Sandnes, Molde and Odense, Denmark; Cranfield, U.K.; Hasselt, Belgium; Arnsberg, Germany; and Baltimore, Md., and has quickly become one of the leading providers of unmanned systems and services, with operations across Europe.
Cummins
Cummins Inc. (Cummins) on Sept. 8 announced that its national initiative, Cummins Advocating for Racial Equity (CARE), has entered into a $5 million partnership investment with Boston-based Reinventure Capital, an “impact fund that invests in U.S.-based companies led and managed by people of color and/or womxn.”
Co-founded and managed by impact investor Edward Dugger, III, Reinventure “provides its partners the opportunity to advance racial and gender equity through access to diversified portfolio companies while achieving competitive returns.”
As a limited partner (LP), Cummins has joined the ranks of companies, such as MassMutual, Bank of America, and others in contributing to a $50 million total fund to be leveraged over an approximate five-year period. This is an ideal collaboration, Cummins says, as Reinventure “aligns its services with organizations who believe in the value of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) as an operational practice.”
“While many Fortune 500 corporations continue to disregard the abundance of evidence pointing to the financial and social advantages of investing in overlooked Black-owned enterprises, Cummins is among a rarefied few who are creating new, non-traditional approaches to inclusive business practices that leverage the power of partnerships,” said Dugger. “Reinventure is proud to work with Cummins to move Black businesses into the American mainstream where they too can help build a strong economy and contribute to the welfare of us all.”
According to Cummins, CARE was launched in 2020 to “take decisive action in the work to address systemic discrimination against Blacks, and drive racial equity in the U.S.” To accomplish this work, Cummins says, CARE brings together all the company’s capabilities and resources to “spearhead change in the communities where it operates,” across four areas of focus: criminal justice reform, social justice reform, police reform and economic empowerment.
As a focus area, Cummins says CARE “strives to create economic empowerment by building Black wealth and income.” According to the company, this has been accomplished solely through grant funding and loan programs to date, with CARE’s Economic Empowerment–Financial Investment team providing almost $5 million to Black-owned enterprises (BOEs) through strategic partnerships with community-based organizations and community development financial institutions (CDFIs).
In looking ahead, the team, led by Akunor Azu, Director–CSSNA New Power and Gbile Adewunmi, Executive Director–Power Systems Strategy, began to consider its sustainability strategy and what that should look like beyond grants and loans. After considering various options, the team decided that private equity investing would be the path forward.
“Private equity investment became the 3rd instrument that we introduced into the CARE financial investment ecosystem,” explains Azu. “Through his leadership at Reinventure Capital, Ed tells a compelling story of spending time in underserved communities, bringing business leaders together to tease out talent, resolving real problems with commercial solutions, and offers a robust process that provides opportunity for growth. Their process matches our core values of not doing-for or doing-to but doing-with communities and businesses leaders who have identified commercially successful and impactful working solutions. We are very fortunate to have a partner in Reinventure supporting the CARE mission!”
As a final, key element of the economic empowerment investment model, “private equity investing will serve as a sustainable, regenerative funding source within the CARE ecosystem, interweaving focus cities, key areas of impact and partners,” Cummins said. “This partnership will also create opportunities to (1) advance Black-owned enterprises through growth capital and leveraging business networks, (2) strengthen both the Cummins and Reinventure portfolios of current and future BOEs investments and (3) share best practices in addressing financial barriers for minority businesses, dealers, etc.”
In a landscape where investment funds founded and led by female and non-white managers are often overlooked, the Cummins-Reinventure Capital private equity partnership will “advance the economic equity of Black Americans by providing returns to deliver radical social, environmental and economic impacts,” the company said. “CARE is always in search of innovative and intelligent ways to drive change, and this partnership is the next natural step in ensuring sustainability for years to come,” Cummins added.
