MFM has built a diverse portfolio across its four key sectors: Life Sciences, Digital, Advanced Materials & Specialised Manufacturing and Software, Electronics & Hardware, and the addition of an established, profitable business in Intelligent Positioning provides our investors with enhanced portfolio breadth alongside maturity through IP’s stellar customer base within a burgeoning market.

The Intelligent Positioning offering empowers brands, corporations and marketers, from SMEs to multi-national businesses, to control and improve their Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and online strategy including social media profile.

Their SEO and business intelligence platform, Pi Datametrics, uses a complex data process to track the top 100 URL results across different search-engines, allowing clients to monitor their ranking on a daily basis.

85% of IP’s customers have seen a 40%+ increase in traffic in their first year of working with their system. IP has already secured contracts with global brands, including BskyB, Harrods, Virgin Active and the RSPCA.

Daniel Titterton, Co-Founder and CEO of IP, said:

“Pi Datametrics has made vast progress over the last 12 months.  In a very competitive space we have gone through the hard yards of proving Pi Datametrics’ worth with some of the world’s biggest and most demanding digital brands.  With Mercia on board we now have the right partner to accelerate the business in value and capability, both now and in the future.”

Rob Johnson, Investment Director and Head of Software, Electronics & Hardware at MFM said:

“We are excited by the proposition created by IP and their ability to develop successful relationships with well-known brands who achieve fast, direct results from IP’s proposition.

“IP is particularly useful for multinational companies that have a large number of products and consequently have a large number of search terms ranking on Google.  Without IP it is a tedious, time consuming task to monitor the relevant key search terms against their product set.  Using IP makes the process simple and should deliver competitive advantage against their competitors.”

MFM has also made an EIS investment into CYP Design Ltd (CDL), following an SEIS investment in October 2013. CDL is a spin-out from De Montfort University, Leicester, which is currently developing technology to make pre-clinical drug safety tests cheaper, more efficient, and more convenient.

CDL has successfully designed a generic expression system capable of producing highly recombinant Human CYPs in baker’s yeast, resulting in a product called Sacchrosome™, a unique membrane system that brings together all the components necessary for CYP activity in a convenient and highly reproducible way.  CYPs are found in the human liver and play a vital role in testing the efficacy and toxicity of drugs.

Pre-clinical trials can cost up to £100m and the pharmaceutical industry is under increasing pressure to improve the efficiency of drug discovery.  An improvement of just 10% in predicting failures could save the industry around £64m in development costs per approved drug.

David Gask Executive Chairman of CDL, said:

“The funding from MFM forms part of a further £275,000 contributed by other EIS investors, allowing CDL to take the technology forward into the next growth stage.

“We are grateful to MFM for their continued support, and we look forward especially to working with Dr. Nicola Broughton, who has extensive knowledge and expertise within the Life Sciences sector.”

Dr. Nicola Broughton, Investment Director and Head of Technology Transfer at MFM, said:

“We are delighted to provide further investment to CDL.  Their work looks set to revolutionise the drug testing industry by making it quicker, more effective and more convenient, and it has already received attention from potential customers within the industry.”

ENDS