P2i Limited, the world leader in liquid repellent nano-coating technology, has completed a £5.5m 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.
“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.”
This was the Company's fourth funding round and has now raised £17.2m since it was the first technology spin-out from the UK's Ministry of Defense in early 2004.
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 technology in applications such as consumer electronics, footwear and bio-consumables (such as 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).
P2i's traction within the electronics sector has gained pace within the past year. 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 P2i's revolutionary water and oil repellent nano-coating technology, 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-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 water and oil repellent technology 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 liquid repellent nano-coating technologies, 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."
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