Scots technology firm raises £500K funding
A Scottish environmental technology group plans to develop its pioneering waste recovery technology and launch an international sales campaign for its record-breaking bacteria test kits after securing £500,000 of funding.
Albagaia's pioneering technology was originally developed to destroy the deadly agents in chemical weapons and later adapted to recover contaminated material and generate clean water.
The firm's Hydrosense subsidiary makes the world's fastest test for the killer Legionella bacteria which cause Legionnaires' disease and innovative smartphone software that reads these and other test results. The test detects the dangerous bug in just 25 minutes at the site of a potential problem compared with up to two weeks in a traditional lab.
Albagaia, which is developing cutting-edge waste water treatment systems using photocatalytic oxidation, said it received inward investment of £240,000, half from Equity Gap angel group and half from Scottish Enterprise's (SE) Scottish Investment Bank.
This latest injection of funding lets the company proceed with research grants worth more than £250,000 from Zero Waste Scotland and Scottish Enterprise’s SMART:Scotland award-funded research and development programme to further develop advanced oxidation technology.
Albagaia chief executive Graham Tyrie said: "This demonstration of faith in Albagaia's future prospects allows us to fund both water treatment and our innovative smartphone reader software which reads test results independently and transmits them to a central database.
"We are developing the reader for our Legionella service and have plans to extend to other point of care tests. Further significant corporate developments are under way as Albagaia positions itself as a key player in the international water treatment and testing markets."
Edinburgh-based Equity Gap is an angel investor syndicate which supports emerging and growing businesses. Commenting on the emerging opportunity, Equity Gap director Jock Millican said: “Albagaia is an excellent investment with the three strands of the business at different stages of development.
“Hydrosense is producing revenue but needs some sales impetus, the smartphone reader is almost ready for sales and the photocatalytic oxidation technology has been proven at small scale. The investment will be used to scale up the advanced oxidation technology and sales staff for the Hydrosense test kit. The management team is strong and the projections are realistic.”
Linlithgow-based Albagaia has been supported by Scottish Enterprise's High Growth Start-Up Unit (HGSU), which provides intensive, hands-on support to young companies with innovative or disruptive intellectual assets and strong international growth potential. The enterprise agency originally invested in the company in 2004 and has now invested further from its Scottish Co-Investment Fund.
Albagaia's Tyrie added: “Scottish Enterprise support has been really instrumental in helping us get to this exciting milestone. These recent developments are based on our success in securing a SMART feasibility grant which matched our directors’ investment since 2010”
Campbell Murray of the High Growth Start-up Unit said: “We have worked intensively with the management team to help the company get to this point – with this fresh injection of funding from Equity Gap and the Scottish Investment Bank, Albagaia will be able to further develop its technology and sales strategy and ultimately achieve significant growth.”
For background see: www.albagaia.com, www.hydrosense.biz and www.equitygap.co.uk.
Photocatalytic oxidation is one of the advanced oxidation processes. Titanium dioxide is excited by ultra violet light to create powerful, oxidising hydroxyl radicals from water. These radicals only exist momentarily, but they have the power to break down the strong carbon bonds which bind complex carbon molecules. Albagaia has developed reactors which maximise the number of radicals generated and harness them to destroy polluting carbon based chemicals in industrial waste streams.
Legionnaires' disease is named after an outbreak of disease at an American Legion convention in Philadelphia in 1976 caused by what was then an unknown bacteria and 34 people died. The disease can be fatal in up to half those who become infected.
Albagaia's name is a combination of Alba, the Gaelic name for Scotland, and Gaia, the Greek goddess of the earth, reflecting the company's origins and green credentials.