Firms fuelled by funding Going for major growth
Here we feature firms across Wales that have raised equity, or have launched new funding rounds, to support ambitious business growth and job creation plans
A syndicate of Welsh investment angels has completed a near £1m investment in Swansea-based Marine Power Systems.
Led by lead investor Andrew Diplock, the syndicate of 15 investors has provided £700,000 along with £250,000 match funding from the Wales Angel Co-investment Fund from the Development Bank of Wales.
A further £750,000 from private investors has brought the total of the latest equity fundraise to £1.7m.
Marine Power Systems has opened pre-registration for early access to a crowdfunding campaign on Crowdcube due to go live later in June. The campaign aims to bring the total raise to a minimum of £2.5m to support the delivery of a multi-megawatt grid-connected and revenue-generating commercial demonstrator in northern Spain during 2022 and progress the business towards market readiness.
Formed in 2008 by Dr Gareth Stockman and Dr Graham Foster, Marine Power Systems is revolutionising the way we harvest energy from the world’s oceans.
The company is on track to be a world leader in the supply of floating wind and wave energy extraction hardware by having the highest performance and most cost-effective technology available in the market.
Following successful mediumscale testing of its fully patent-protected marine energy-generation technology, the company is now working at megawatt scale to demonstrate its grid-connected technology ahead of commercialisation.
Dr Stockman said: “We are now working at full scale and this represents the final stage of our testing programme before we are in a position to deliver commercial devices to our customers.”
As one of the most active investors currently ‘approved’ to work with the Wales Angel Co-investment Fund, Mr Diplock has a growing portfolio of private investments and is a keen advocate of developing start-ups and SMEs in Wales.
QLM Technology
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QLM, which is pioneering technology to support a low-carbon economy, has raised £3.1m through a seed funding round as it confirms it is relocating from Bristol to Newport.
The investment is led by the Green Angel Syndicate and includes the Enterprise100 syndicate, the Newable Venture Fund, the Development
Bank of Wales, the Bristol Private Equity Club, the Britbots Seed Fund, and Houston-based oilfield technology solutions provider ChampionX.
The consortium of green investors, technology accelerators and oil and gas industry professionals shares QLM’s vision of enabling organisations to achieve net zero through mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions.
The investment will drive the expansion of QLM’s technical and commercial capability, secure industrial validation and provide a roadmap to commercial readiness of its revolutionary quantum gas camera.
QLM’s chief executive, Dr Murray Reed, said: “This funding round will enable us to scale up our development and launch our business providing next-generation greenhouse gas monitoring. Our unique quantum Lidar is the right solution for the challenge of how to effectively measure industrial methane emissions, and meet the major commitments that the oil and gas majors have made to control their greenhouse gas emissions.”
Dr Bernard Bulkin, leader of the Green Angel investment and incoming QLM chairman said: “QLM has technology with great potential to substantially change what we know about industrial and environmental greenhouse emissions and help enable net zero. I feel confident this seed round will allow the company to progress rapidly to the next level.”
Rafe Joseph, investment executive, Development Bank of Wales said: “This investment will see ourselves and a strong syndicate of experienced investors working with QLM to help them revolutionise the greenhouse gas detection industry.”
Deer Technology
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A Port Talbot-based technology firm has secured investment of more than £1.3m in equity to support its growth plans.
It comes as Deer Technology has secured a £2.5m contract win with Wave, a retailer in the non-household water market
The Development Bank of Wales led its latest fundraising round with £250,000 of equity – taking its total investment in the company to £500,000 in the last two years.
Wealth Club, the UK’s largest high net worth investor platform, raised an additional £820,000 to complete the round alongside Deer Technology’s existing angel investors. The investment totalled £1.32m.
Deer Technology was established in 2014 by co-founders Hugh Mort and Garry Jackson, who co-invented the LimpetReader to take accurate meter readings.
The company says the technology provides a new standard in the remote, non-invasive and accurate recording of meter readings for water, electricity, gas and other metered consumption.
It can be retrofitted to any traditional analogue meter and uses micro-cameras in sealed housings to capture timestamped images of the meter display, before sending them via secure data connection to an online portal.
This removes the need for costly and unreliable manual reads.
The LimpetReader is trademarked in the
UK and EU, patented in the UK, and patent-pending in Europe, the US and other jurisdictions. With
10 staff, DeerTech uses UK-based companies to manufacture and assemble the products.
The latest investment will be used to fund rapid commercial growth and the installation of 8,500 readers over the next two years for national water retailer
Wave.
A slimline LimpetReader is scheduled for launch in late 2021.
Chief executive Craig Mellor said: “The continued support of the Development Bank of Wales and their confidence in the team at Deer Technology is very much appreciated.”
Col Batten, who led the investment on behalf of the Development Bank
of Wales, added: “Regular meter reads are critical to the UK achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 – otherwise wastage can go undetected and unsolved.
“As an example, an estimated 15% of UK water meters go unread for more than one year.
“The LimpetReader effectively turns any conventional analogue meter into a smart meter.
“With an estimated 56.4 million utility meters in the UK alone, this is a market that offers Deer Technology the real opportunity to scale rapidly.”
Loopster
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Newport-based secondhand fashion platfo rm Loopster h a s launched a £500,000 fundraising round to support its growth and job creation plans.
Launched in 2017 by selling used designer children’s clothes, it added womenswear last year. Long term it plans to sell men’s clothes.
Over the last ten months its revenues have grown 400%. To date some 12,000 items have been sold through its platform, and over the next few years Loopster is projecting becoming a multi- milli on- pound turnover venture. Loopster buys products from sellers, providing they meet the quality threshold, with the company then seeking to sell them on at a quarter or less of new high street prices. Clothes which do not pass the hand check are returned to the seller, or if they agree, donated to the charity. It secured a six-figure seed investment in 2020 from the Development Bank of Wales and independent investors which has allowed the firm to improve its technology platform, increase process efficiencies and improve the customer experience.
Since moving its headquarters and fulfilment activities to the Newport Business Centre in 2020 the business has created six jobs with further recruitment planned.
Loopster is now aiming to raise to £500,000 in Enterprise Investment Scheme eligible equity, which will support the development of partner services for major retailer and an environmental impact calculator.
Founder and chief executive Jane Fellner said: “Fashion is one of the most polluting industries on the planet. At Loopster, our aim is to extend the life of fashion, by making shopping second-hand or past season, easy and accessible to all.”
Monva
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Flintshire-based fintech firm Monva has launched its latest round of fundraising, returning to Crowdcube one year after smashing its last fundraising target.
The start-up is now targeting a further £200,000 investment via Crowdcube, ahead of a larger institutional round expected to take place towards the end of 2021.
The smart comparison service uses customer data and artificial intelligence to personalise and revolutionise the price comparison customer experience.
Antiverse
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Cardiff-based biotech firm Antiverse, which is developing a computational antibody drug discovery platform, has raised seed funding of £1.4m to support its growth plans.
The round comprises new investment and match funding from the UKI2S Innovate Accelerator. The funding will be used to further develop the firm’s AI antibody drug discovery platform, which rapidly and accurately predicts antibody-antigen binding to identify antibody drug candidates.
Investors in the seed round funding include Development Bank of Wales, the Angel Co-Investment Fund, Tensor Ventures, Wren Capital, Ed Parkinson, Cambridge Angels, and SyndicateRoom.
A portion of the capital raised will be used to build a laboratory in Cardiff.
TrakCel
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Cardiff-based TrakCel, a leading supplier of cellular orchestration solutions supporting the cell and gene therapy industry, has closed its latest funding round led by top-ten Fortune 500 firm AmerisourceBergen and Labcorp.
The equity investments from the two New York-listed life sciences firms will enable Trakcel to accelerate global expansion through further development of its cellular therapy orchestration solution.
The exact value of the investment round has not been disclosed, but is an eight-figure amount.
TrakCel will use both the investment and the combined expertise gained from collaborations with the investors to further augment its offering to both clinical and commercialstage cell and gene therapy developers.
Yoello
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One of Wales’ most promising fintech start-ups, Yoello has secured investment from Hodge to support its ambitious global expansion plans.
In its first equity investment, the value of which hasn’t been disclosed, the only headquartered bank in Wales has backed the Cardiff-based developer of an innovative mobile and payment platform that provides pubs and restaurants a cheaper, instantaneous and secure way to manage payments.
Its opening banking technology directly connects the banks of customers and outlets, cutting out middlemen. It said this has the potential to save the hospitality sector £8bn a year.
By the end of this year it aims to have a workforce of 130. Thousands of businesses are now trading through Yoello not only in the UK, but overseas.
Foresight Group
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Foresight Group, a listed infrastructure and private equity investment manager, has announced the first close of its latest fund at £65m.
The Foresight Regional Investment III fund is cornerstoned by the Greater Manchester Pension Fund, with strong support from Clwyd and Merseyside Pension Funds.
The new fund is targeting investments into established SMEs valued up to £30m in north Wales, the North of England and beyond.
The fund will be managed by Foresight’s collegiate nationwide private equity team.
James Livingston, partner at Foresight, said: “We are delighted to be welcoming both new and returning investors, which will continue to address the gap in the market.”