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.
Marine Power Systems
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 Development Bank of Wales’ Wales Angel Co-investment Fund.
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.
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Following successful medium scale testing of their 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. The business is already creating significant traction in the market and we have a number of revenue generating pre-commercial projects in the pipeline that will further prove the effectiveness of our technology ahead of delivering our devices into first utility scale commercial arrays both here in the 海角视频 and overseas.”
“This latest fundraise represents a fantastic investment opportunity prior to an institutional equity funding round later this year. The continued support of investors means that we’re right at the heart of the green growth agenda. We’re very grateful for their support.”
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.
He said: “With the International Energy Agency forecasting global energy needs to expand 30% by 2040 - the equivalent of adding another China and India to today’s global energy demand - marine renewable energy represents the largest source of sustainable and cost competitive electricity generation. 20% of 海角视频 demand alone could be met by marine by 2050.
“This is a huge opportunity for the 海角视频 as part of an island nation to lead the way in this new sector; creating jobs and supply chain opportunities that really put Wales firmly on the global map. With a background in energy, it’s a real privilege to support Welsh SMEs as a co-investor but it is particularly exciting to be working with such a like-minded syndicate of angels who all share a commitment to investing for the benefit of future generations.”
Tom Preene of Angels Invest Wales said: “Marine Power Systems is positioned to be one of a few proven technology providers that has the potential to dominate a large global marketplace.
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“There is a real sense of excitement with significant demand for both floating offshore wind and wave energy devices. This is a long-term sustainable business with a flexible and collaborative approach that is investing in cutting-edge technology.
"That coupled with the highly experienced management team makes Marine Power Systems an attractive investment proposition, particularly for those who want to support Wales’ ambitions for a green economy. As a lead investor, Andrew brings much experience of the sector and has brought together a syndicate of 15 investors to secure the match funding from our co-investment fund and that increases the fire power of syndicated angel investing.”
QLM Technology
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.
QLM’s work will support international ambitions to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, safeguarding our environment and planet for future generations. We are also delighted that following this funding round QLM has made the strategic decision to move to South Wales and take advantage of the region’s compound semiconductor cluster.”
Deer Technology
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 海角视频’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 time-stamped 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 海角视频 and EU, patented in the 海角视频, and patent-pending in Europe, the US and other jurisdictions. With 10 staff, DeerTech uses 海角视频-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: “Utility businesses are facing increased governmental and regulatory pressure to provide accurate meter readings and improve their environmental credentials.
“We’ve spent the time developing and patenting our innovative technology that now provides real-time accurate meter reads to meet regulatory requirements, remotely and at half the cost.
“The continued support of the Development Bank of Wales and their confidence in the team at Deer Technology is very much appreciated.
“Their early-stage funding gave us the opportunity to complete the product development, secure early installation contracts and provided the platform to secure the confidence of Wealth Club investors.”
Alex Davies, founder and chief executive of Wealth Club, said: “Deer Technology is an exciting young company, presenting investors with the opportunity to co-invest alongside the Development Bank of Wales as a leading equity investor.
“The scale of the contract win with Wave demonstrates the huge potential that the team has with trials also underway with a number of leading 海角视频 organisations and blue-chip companies. Deer Technology is certainly one to watch.”
While Col Batten, who led the investment on behalf of the Development Bank of Wales, added: “Regular meter reads are critical to the 海角视频 achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 – otherwise wastage can go undetected and unsolved.
“As an example, an estimated 15% of 海角视频 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 海角视频 alone, this is a market that offers Deer Technology as a Welsh business the real opportunity to scale rapidly.
“Our backing has helped to secure the investment from Wealth Club investors and we have every confidence that the impact of our combined capital funding will make a significant difference to Deer Technology and the local supply chain.”
Loopster
Newport-based second hand fashion platform Loopster has 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-million 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 6 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. 300 tonnes of our clothes in the 海角视频 end up in landfill or incinerated every year. At Loopster, our aim is to extend the life of fashion, by making shopping second-hand or past season, easy and accessible to all.
“Retailers are being held increasingly accountable by both consumers and investors, to deliver on their sustainability promises. We know that 62% of consumers would buy more from fashion brands that partner with second-hand platforms.
"We aim to be that sustainable partner of choice for major brands. We have developed a brand credit system which allows brands to offer their customers the option to sell their unwanted clothes to Loopster in return for brand credit.”
Extending the life of one garment through second-hand use by just nine months reduces its carbon and water footprint by 20 to 30% which is where Loopster comes in.
Loopster non-executive director and entrepreneur, Kate Methuen-Ley, said: “We know that we need long-term solutions to meet climate targets and environmental challenges, and post-pandemic the need for sustainable solutions has never been greater.
"Here in Wales, we are leading the charge via our Future Generations Act, so it’s fantastic to see the growth Loopster has achieved in such a short period.
"This next investment will result in even more gains for the local economy as well as Jane’s mission to reduce the environmental impact of the fashion industry.”
Monva
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.
The fintech is the brainchild of chie executive Steve Wiley and chief operating officer Stuart Wakefield, who previously held senior executive positions at MoneySuperMarket, MBNA and Virgin Money, with decades of experience in fintech and financial services.
Mr Wiley said: “We’re proud to announce our latest round of crowdfunding following an exciting period of development for Monva.”
“Price comparison sites were at the forefront of the digital revolution in financial services. However, innovation has slowed, and the mainstream model has become outdated, predicated on the user doing the hard work and built on a noisy, icon led marketplace.
" Despite their growth, there remains over 80% of people in the 海角视频 who have never switched a product, or switch rarely. Our smart technology and money saving assistant, Mo, represent the biggest advancement in the industry yet.
"Our aim is to serve not only those who use comparison today, but also those who have been put off from making important financial decisions and the potential of saving money by using services promoted by gimmicks that do little to support the customer.
"Since our last raise in May 2020, MONVA has made incredible progress. We have hired several senior specialists; built partnerships with key brands ab built key elements of our technology.
"We’re excited about the huge opportunity ahead of us to continue building MONVA and developing a next generation price comparison service for our users.”
Antiverse
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 海角视频I2S 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 and expand the technical team through recruitment of specialist machine learning engineers, laboratory scientists and structural biologists.
Antiverse is combining machine learning and phage display techniques to model antibody-antigen interactions. The current version of the platform uses next generation sequencing and AI to provide diverse antibody candidates for any given target.
The technology will enable the development of drugs for “difficult” targets associated with cancer, heart, and lung diseases.
TrakCel
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 commercial-stage cell and gene therapy developers.
TrakCel has developed a portfolio of live deployments in the industry across a range of therapies, from autologous and allogeneic therapies, personalised cancer vaccines and CRISPR (a technology that can be used to edit genes), to tumour and marrow infiltrating lymphocyte therapies.
The backing of AmerisourceBergen will allow TrakCel to significantly expand its reach. It will also enable the two companies to offer services that drive them toward further standardisation of the delivery of cell and gene therapies.
Yoello
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 海角视频, but overseas including Australia, the US and Ireland.
Foresight Group
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 to the Fund, which will continue to address the gap in the market we have demonstrated with its predecessor fund. We look forward to supporting the growth of smaller companies."
Osborne Clarke acted as legal counsel to Foresight Group LLP.