Bioscience company boss in talks to secure future

Feb 18 2010 by Peter McCusker, The Journal

THE boss of a North East bioscience company remains confident he can resurrect the business with talks currently under way to raise £2m to help secure its future.

Stock market-listed Antnano, of County Durham, ceased trading late last year laying off its 16 staff after it ran out of cash.

But its patented product for detecting airborne particles including bird flu and Semtex is a world leader and with over £4m in grants and orders on the books efforts are currently under way to get the business up and running.

Chief executive Joe Arend said: “We are trying to raise a couple of million from a consortium of investors and existing shareholders and are currently going through the legal process.

“Negotiations are still going on but I am reasonably confident that by the end of March we will have reached our target.”

Antnano was awarded almost £4m from the Singapore government to carry out further research detecting bird flu and has further orders in place for £300,000.

The firm was established at Sunderland University before spinning out on its own in 2005 and has benefited from investments of around £5m in that time.

In 2009 it bought Cheshire-based air sampling company Newton Instrument for £250,000 which gave it access to over 500 new potential customers.

Its turnover in 2008 was £320,000 compared to £120,000 in the previous year.

Its major breakthrough which gives it cause for optimism was the signing of a partnership in 2008 with a Singapore university supported by a £3.7m grant from the Singapore government which will fund further research for at least five years.

However the company’s problems crystallised in December last year when it was forced to suspend trading in its shares.

The firm blamed software issues for an unexpected six-month delay in manufacturing one of its product lines prompting a working capital cash crisis.

It had listed its shares on the Plus Market, which is a smaller market even than the Alternative Investment Market, in February 2007.

Before Christmas Mr Arend spent weeks in a fruitless search for new investment from a number of banks and regional agencies.

He said at the time: “We started to go to the banks but they are not very receptive at the moment and wouldn’t support us. We also went to some local government funding agencies but they didn’t have the budget. We are still trying to raise the £500,000 but whether we can or not before the full liquidation is an open book.”

Its products are keenly sought after by drug research companies and chemical giants such as Procter and Gamble and Unilever.