IMSPEX Diagnostics completes £1.4 million funding round

IMSPEX Diagnostics Limited, an emerging analytical chemistry company developing innovative point of use devices for monitoring and QC/QA applications in the environmental, food, drink, fragrance and clinical diagnostics markets, announced today it has completed its £1.4 million funding round led by Finance Wales and the Angel CoFund.

The funds will be invested in establishing a Group administration and sales team who will be based in Abercynon. IMSPEX acquired Dortmund based technology company G.A.S GmbH in January 2013.  The subsidiary develops and manufactures the Groups range of analytical instrumentation based on Ion Mobility Spectrometry (IMS).  The lead products are the Siloxane and Beer analysers.  The Siloxane device monitors the quality of biogas in real time, ensuring it is sufficiently clean to pump on to national gas grids.  The beer analyser offers brewers a range of analytical tests that can be performed at point of use in the brewery. In particular determining when beers have reached maturity and analysing aromatic and flavour components. 

Finance Wales and the Angel CoFund, who were joined in this round by a number of private investors, led the financing.

Technology leader Kevin Lomax heads Envestors new non-executive board to guide planned growth

Envestors, the UK's leading private investor network, has appointed three experienced entrepreneurs as non-executive board members and announces plans for a secure technology platform to increase private investors' participation in backing growth businesses.

Kevin Lomax, technology entrepreneur who founded and led the software group Misys plc to a FTSE100 company, becomes chairman. Also joining as non-executive directors are Penny Avis, a former Deloitte LLP corporate finance partner and Julian Box, founder and CEO of Calligo, a provider of cloud-based enterprise data security solutions.

Together with Envestors' experienced executive team, they are committed to extend its global network of investors for companies seeking £500,000 to £10 million of equity funding.

The advance comes as Envestors, based in London with offices in Yorkshire, Jersey, Monaco and Dubai, celebrates winning this year's Investor Allstars' Private Investor Network of the Yearaward for the third time in its successful ten year history.

Crowd funders slay dragons

The success of equity crowd funding platforms in helping the UK's most exciting startups secure investment is coming at the expense of traditional angel networks.

Seed deals on the rise... Seed investments are enjoying a stellar 2014 with deal numbers set to rise by 30% over 2013's total and a massive 228% against 2011.

... thanks to crowd funding platforms Equity crowd funding platforms have been instrumental in this rise. From just six deals in the whole of 2011, these platforms have delivered over a hundred investments so far in 2014. To put that in context, that means the proportion of seed deals financed by crowd funding platforms has risen from just 4% in 2011 to over 29% in 2014-to-date.

Angel networks on the decline? Bucking the trend are Angel Networks who appear to be on the decline, making just 74 public investments in the first nine months of the year. This means they have participated in just 9% of seed deals, compared to 25% back in 2012. The activities of these networks look set to at best stagnate in what is a rapidly growing market.