P2i, the world leader in
liquid repellent nano-coating technology, has completed a £5.5m ($8m)
fund raising to provide further working capital to support its rapid international
growth.
The funding has come from existing shareholders; Naxos Capital Partners, Swarraton
Partners, Porton Capital, Unilever Ventures and Rainbow Seedfund. This was the
company’s fourth funding round since becoming the first technology spin-out
from the UK’s Ministry of Defense in early 2004, raising a total of £17.2m
($25m) in this time.
P2i’s revenues have increased in the first six months of the financial
year to 31 January 2010 by more than three times. Most notably, ongoing technology
license revenues jumped by over 600%, which reflects the rapid take up of P2i’s
liquid repellent nano-coating in applications such as consumer electronics,
footwear and bio-consumables (e.g. pipette tips).
P2i signed six significant new multi-year technology licensing deals in the
first six months of the current financial year, in four core markets: electronics
(hearing aids), lifestyle (sports footwear), energy & filtration (industrial
filters) and military (clothing).
Within the past year, P2i’s traction within the electronics sector has
gained particular pace. In this key market, P2i has signed licensing agreements
with three of the world’s six largest hearing aid manufacturers. In April
2010, in excess of 225,000 hearing aids were processed with Aridion™,
P2i’s revolutionary water and oil repellent nano-coating technology for
electronics, representing an annual run rate of 2.7m units.
The company has also doubled the number of employees and scaled up its operations,
which are now located across Europe, North America and Asia (China, Singapore,
Thailand and Indonesia).
Carl Francis, Chief Executive of P2i, comments: “We are now really beginning
to gain momentum, with our world leading liquid repellent nano-coating technology
being used by a range of customers in a range of high volume products around
the world. The jump in royalty revenue is a clear indication of our prospects
as our customers ramp up the usage of our technology.
“We have also signed another six key multi-year licensing agreements
across four sectors, which not only bodes well for our prospects, but importantly
widens our industry sector exposure. A clear indication of the numerous opportunities
in new markets that we are developing is that over a third of all new hearing
aids worldwide were processed with our revolutionary Aridion™ nano-coating
in April.
“The demand across a number of substantial international industry markets
has been very strong – beyond hearing aids, we are confident of developing
opportunities in the huge mobile devices market. Our customers have great confidence
in adopting our technology brands, Aridion™ and ion-mask™, since
we have a proven ability to roll out robust, scalable manufacturing solutions
in their own facilities.
“We have great shareholders, and their support at such an economically
difficult time has enabled us to continue to grow the business rapidly and expand
on our first mover advantage in liquid repellent nano-coating technology.”