New documents show more than £3.4m in lost revenue for Newcastle tech firm Opencast following the closure of a promising energy management start-up.
Swarm Energy's six employees were made redundant in December last year, and the company closed down in January, having only launched in 2023. Its mission had been to develop a system which changed the way people buy, generate and use energy in their homes, with initial customers based in the North East.
But difficulties in securing investment in 2024 led to board level changes and plans to change the organisational structure of the business to cut costs and boost sales. Ultimately no investment was found and the business was closed before being liquidated.
Now, papers show Hoults Yard neighbour Opencast - which had partnered with Swarm Energy to develop its technology - has missed out on £3.4m of revenue following the closure. That forms part of a £3.8m estimated sum owed to creditors.
In 2023 Opencast said it had committed a team of 14 staff, including developers, solutions architects, accessibility designers and user researchers, to Swarm, in a bid to accelerate progress. It said its backing of Swarm would help to get it to market faster and allow both companies to share in any future success.
Tom Lawson, Opencast chief executive, said: "At Opencast we were excited to support Swarm's ambition for change in the home energy market by developing an innovative product with green technology at its heart. The start-up had the potential to make a positive impact on the environment and create new green jobs in the North East economy.
"We deployed a group of Opencast specialists to work with Swarm's team on developing its technology, allowing its in-house team to focus on getting the new product out to market. At the time we had capacity in the business and were able to deploy people who were not allocated on other projects to work with Swarm.
"The £3.4m figure Swarm submitted to Companies House covers the revenue that Opencast would have realised on our commercial rates over a period from July 2023 to late 2024. To protect Opencast's investment the two companies agreed that, until we were repaid, we would own the intellectual property of the technology that we created for Swarm.
"We're sad that Swarm was unable to gain the traction in the market to bring in the funding the business needed. It is a financial reality that most Ƶ start-ups don't survive past their first few years. Swarm is unfortunately one of the start-ups that didn't make it. We wish Swarm's founders Anthony Piggott and Dan Martin, as well as the rest of their team, the best of luck with whatever comes next."
Announcing the closure of Swarm in January, co-founder Anthony Piggott said it was a "sad story" but thanked staff for their hard work and passion.
