Calculus Capital invests £3m in developer of cutting-edge diagnostic technologies

Private equity specialist Calculus Capital has made a multi-million-pound investment in Bedford-based Mologic, a developer of cutting-edge point-of-care diagnostic devices that help patients manage their own conditions.

The £3m investment aims to enable Mologic to commercialise innovative medical diagnostic technology, carry out clinical trials and obtain CE Mark regulatory approval (denoting compliance with European Union standards) and other regulatory approvals as needed in international markets beyond the EU, to take products to market.

Mologic's diagnostic product pipeline includes revolutionary new systems for patients with long term respiratory problems to use in their own home.  The technology has the power to improve quality of life and maintain better lung function through more effective use of medication.  The plan is for a series of products to reach market-readiness over the next three years, starting in the first half of 2016. In some cases Mologic will bring the product to market on its own, in others the preferred route will be to strike sales and distribution deals with partner companies already established in the relevant market area.

The common theme in all of the products is their intended use to improve quality of life for patients, while easing pressure on health services and reducing costs for healthcare providers.

In addition to the product pipeline, Mologic conducts a thriving contract research business in a variety of areas (not just medical), including commercial assay development, enzyme therapeutics and pilot manufacturing. Its clients include blue-chip pharmaceutical companies and leading manufacturers of medical devices.

Calculus was attracted to Mologic because of its diverse suite of diagnostic products and the experienced and impressive senior management team, which includes Professor Paul Davis, Chief Scientific Officer and co-founder, who was a co-inventor of the well-known Clear Blue pregnancy test.

Mark Davis, formerly a microbial molecular biologist at Unilever, co-founded the company and is its Chief Executive Officer.

Susan McDonald, Chairman of Calculus Capital, said: "Mologic's technology is at the forefront of diagnostic innovation, assisting medics to make the decisions that improve quality of life for millions of people. Devices developed by Mologic also enable patients to manage their conditions in the home environment, thereby easing pressure on healthcare providers.

"For example, a tool developed by Mologic allows peritoneal dialysis patients to detect infection before it becomes a problem, working by means of a simple but very sensitive test built into a peritoneal dialysis bag.  This allows pre-emptive medication to be taken earlier than would otherwise be possible.

"The Mologic team has a track record of success and the products it currently has at various stages of development show that this is likely to continue. Our investment in the company will enable it to move forward with confidence, accelerate research and development programmes and bring some exceptionally exciting technology to market.

Mologic is involved in a number of contract partnering programmes ranging from diagnostics that support tropical medicine to developing novel recombinant proteins for application in the food supply chain."

Mologic Chief Executive Mark Davis said: "This £3m investment represents an important step in our development. Calculus Capital's input gives us the

financial muscle to match the weight of innovation at Mologic and we are very pleased to have such forward-thinking investors on board."

€100,000 to be shared across seven low carbon start-ups on Innovation Birmingham's accelerator programme

€100,000 (£72,484) of initial investment cash is being shared across seven start-ups on Innovation Birmingham's Low Carbon Accelerator programme, which is part of the European-funded Climate-KIC initiative.

The low carbon start-ups pitched for the investment funding, in front of a panel of three industry judges. The process was facilitated by one of the programme's Entrepreneur s in Residence. 

The grant funding will be used to pay for research and development, and other activity to enable the low carbon products and services to be launched to market in an accelerated timescale.

Four Birmingham-based start-ups have been selected to receive the maximum amount available per company, which is €20,000 (£14,482). The four start-ups comprise Intesys Ltd, which is developing the i-Magine predictive heating controller - a device that learns the dynamic thermal characteristics of domestic properties. Borroclub.co.uk is a marketplace for people to rent out their idle household items to others who live in the locality. SPICA Technologies is developing Devicepoint^TM - a risk management tool to control Legionella, powered by a secured wireless network and low-energy sensors. Truckulus is a combined transport management system and return loads marketplace with a smartphone component, designed to significantly reduce the number of empty journeys made by hauliers.

Matt Dredger, CEO of Innovation Birmingham Campus-based Borroclub.co.uk said: "On average, a drill is used for a total of 12 minutes a year. The rest of the time, it's taking up space in a home or garage and gathering dust. By lending it out to people in the local area, the owner of the drill can make a bit of money, while feeling like they're actually contributing to their local community. In the past couple of weeks, our borrowers have saved over £1,300 and in the process, over 300kg of CO₂ has also been saved."

On 29-30^th October, the annual Climate-KIC Innovation Festival will take place, bringing together over 300 low carbon entrepreneurs, stakeholders and partners from across Europe. The annual event is held in a different European city each year - for 2015, the Festival will take place at The ICC, Birmingham.

Katharine Fuller, Innovation Birmingham's Senior Project Manager for EU Projects said: "Early stage grant funding makes such a difference to start-up businesses. The timetable required for an entrepreneur to launch their product or service to market is critical, and the funding available through the European Climate-KIC initiative enables the best businesses starting up in the low carbon sector to receive a helpful grant.

"In addition to this grant funding, all of the businesses will continue to work alongside our Entrepreneurs in Residence who have been specifically appointed as advisers to the Low Carbon Accelerator programme. The ultimate aim is to help to launch as many sustainable start-ups as possible."

The three judges awarding the grant funding were: Clayton Shaw from Sampad, Dan Licari representing the Knowledge Transfer Network and Dr Ben Onyido from Innovation Birmingham's Climate-KIC team. The judging process was facilitated by Steve Harris, a Climate-KIC Entrepreneur in Residence.

The Low Carbon Accelerator is a Climate Knowledge Innovation Community (Climate-KIC) project, which Innovation Birmingham is a delivery partner for. Climate-KIC is the EU's main climate innovation initiative, and was one of the first Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs) created by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) in 2010. The EIT is the European Union body tasked with creating sustainable European growth and jobs while dealing with the global challenges of our time.

Mercia expands regional footprint with new office and university partnerships in Scotland

Mercia Technologies PLC (AIM: Merc, "Mercia"), a Midlands-based investment group building, funding and commercialising technology businesses across the UK, has opened an Edinburgh office and secured partnerships with Abertay University and the University of Strathclyde, to reinforce its support for early stage Scottish businesses. The office will be headed by Paul Devlin, who joins Mercia as Investment Manager, Scotland.

Located in central Edinburgh, the office will allow Mercia to bolster its commitment to finding and investing in disruptive, scalable technology businesses in Scotland, which is largely underserved by later stage investors despite its impressive variety of start-ups and spinouts.

Paul Devlin, who ran the LAUNCH.ed student company formation service at the University of Edinburgh until joining Mercia, will build a team in Scotland to increase Mercia's deal flow and provide the company with new and exciting investment opportunities. Paul has a strong track record as an entrepreneur and supporter of early stage businesses and has a wealth of expertise in market and technology assessment, academic and industrial collaborations, company formation and IP commercialisation.

Mercia's partnerships with Abertay University, which has notable strengths in the digital sector, and the University of Strathclyde, which excels in life sciences, manufacturing and electronics, will provide Mercia with a pipeline of new investment opportunities.

Mercia now has 11 partnerships with universities across the Midlands, the North and Scotland, with a dedicated technology transfer team to support spinout companies through to commercialisation. Spinouts from these partners now provide approximately 50% of all investments via Mercia's third party funds, managed by its wholly-owned subsidiary, Mercia Fund Management (MFM).

As a result, MFM recently successfully raised its University Growth Fund, a tax-efficient SEIS and EIS fund, which will be used to support university spinouts from Mercia's partners across the UK.

Mark Payton, CEO of Mercia Technologies, said:

"When we listed on AIM last year to scale our established model of informed and patient capital provision, Mercia made a clear statement of intent - that it was a national business with a strong focus on the Midlands, the North and Scotland, all of which are a hotbed of technology-led innovators struggling to find supportive investment.

UK Tech Start-Up Kontainers Brings the Trillion Dollar Ocean Freight Industry into the 21st Century

Kontainers, the booking.com for ocean freight, has raised a $1.3m seed round led by London-based EC1 Capital, with participation from Northstar Ventures and Partech Ventures. The North-East based company, an alumni of accelerator Ignite 100, is revolutionising the trillion dollar global freight industry, already attracting more than 100 retailers and manufacturers to the online platform in only a few months. Kontainers allows companies who ship goods via containers to have instant access to live shipping rates, combined with an online booking, customs clearance and a real-time tracking system through the Kontainers.com website, reducing the time it takes to organise the shipping process from days down to minutes.

Container shipping, the key enabler of trillions of dollar of global trade, is finally entering the internet age, having seen barely no innovation in the way it operates since its inception well over 50 years ago. Still running on phone calls, faxes, emails and spreadsheets, the industry has historically been governed by intermediaries, known as freight forwarders, who stand in between the exporters and the shipping lines, brokering their services. In times when the majority of a company's operations are run on software, the antiquated way of arranging ocean shipping represents a strong head-wind for exporters trying to get their products across the world, while remaining competitive in the global marketplace.

Kontainers claims to be the fastest and simplest way to book containers, introducing cutting-edge technology to bring transparency and efficiency into an industry that has never been online before. Kontainers has already secured nationwide reach in the UK, covering all kinds of exporters from dairy farmers in Wales to sand exporters in Manchester. The company has rapidly attracted  companies who are actively using its innovative platform to book containers, including iconic brands such as Bosch and Saint Gobain. Shipping lines are also taking notice, with one of the top five largest at an advanced stage of talks to work with Kontainers on a global basis.

Headquartered in Newcastle, with a satellite London office, Kontainers already has it's first US customer and officially launching in the USA this month with plans to roll-out more products, such as an imports module and a LCL ("less than container load") module, in the next three months.

Graham Parker, co-founder of www.kontainers.co.uk, commented: "It's ludicrous that today, while one can leverage software like Xero, Salesforce, Dropbox, AWS and Google Apps to run a business, trillions of dollars of trade still rely on decades old tech like phones and faxes. Our mission is to simplify global trade and our cutting-edge but intuitive platform does exactly that. By providing instant rates and a two minute complete door-to-door booking experience never seen before in the industry, we are helping UK exporters quote and ship faster, get the fastest or lowest possible rates, all the while making their customers experience better, get faster re-orders whilst helping grow exports. If we get this right, not only will global trade get simpler, but there will be more if it."

Julian Carter, Founding Partner of EC1 Capital comments: "Kontainers is going after an enormous, global scale opportunity yet untouched by technology in any meaningful way. We're very excited to back an industry veteran like Graham and an experienced technologist like Charlie in their grand vision to build the operating system of global trade. This seed round will help build the core team, execute its product roadmap and test new markets."

Kontainers have assembled an impressive board led by chairman Brendan McDonagh, who previously started Arantech and exited for $90m, and Mr Lars Jensen, an industry thought leader and a former director of Maersk, the world's largest shipping line.