£600,000 investment brings a boost to Blyth firm ASL

Feb 9 2010 by Peter McCusker, The Journal

A TECHNOLOGY firm has won a £600,000 boost in its bid to win the race to improve the efficiency and stability of energy distribution around the national electricity network.

The superconducting fault current limiter (SFCL) technology developed by Blyth-based Applied Superconductor Ltd (ASL) is attracting the interest of three major UK electricity network operators – Electricity North West, Scottish Power and CE Electric.

And with ever greater commercial opportunities in the offing for ASL, the company is now taking its business development plans on to the next stage with the help of a £600,000 follow-on investment package.

NEL Capital, the venture capital arm of regional fund management firm NEL Fund Managers, and NorthStar Equity Investors have invested the cash following their initial investments in ASL in 2007.

A further £50,000 has been invested by the ASL management team and a number of private investors.

Herbert Piereder, chief executive at ASL, says: “The UK is very much the place to be for developing this kind of technology – the Government has recognised their important role in meeting its 2020 carbon reduction targets, and the energy regulator Ofgem has put valuable measures in place to assist with their development and implementation.

“Our strong relationships with three of the major electricity distributors give us real credibility in a notoriously conservative market, as well as a significant advantage over many of our competitors, and we’re confident that we have the knowledge and structure to remain in the vanguard of firms working in this field.

“Our immediate focus is very much on the UK, but the transferable nature of this technology, the overseas links of the companies with which we’re already working and the need to address the faults that occur in every electricity network would indicate that there will also be major overseas opportunities for us in the medium and long term.

“The ongoing involvement of NEL and NorthStar, allied to the firm backing we’ve received from both One North East and the New & Renewable Energy Centre (NAREC), gives us the chance to refine our technologies and reinforce our strategic market positioning, thus giving us the best possible chance of success.”