BacTest completes £600k over-funding round

Annie Brooking, CEO, BacTest

Bactest’s management originally set out to raise £450,000 from existing shareholders and new investors, including the Low Carbon Innovation Fund, Angel CoFund and numerous angels including Patrick Deane and Graeme Porteous. They promptly raised the full sum and flew all the way up to their initial overfunding limit of £600,000. The board then authorised a round extension of £250,000.

Bactest have developed two products, Speedy Breedy, which is fully developed and currently on sale, and Shepherd, which is in the final stages of development, with launch planned for April 2015.

Speedy Breedy
Speedy Breedy is an instrument (about the size of a loaf of bread) that allows non-experts to test for microbial contamination. Each test takes place in a single-use disposable culture vessel. Speedy Breedy keeps a full audit trail of every test to ensure accountability and compliance. Once a test has been conducted, Speedy Breedy is also able to pasteurise the sample to allow for its safe disposal.

Shepherd
Shepherd is Bactest’s second product which is at the prototype stage and currently deployed and working at Anglian Water. Shepherd is due to officially launch in April 2015. Shepherd is an Activated Sludge (AS) Monitoring and Management System that floats in an AS lane and automatically samples every 60 minutes calculating an accurate BOD5 proxy. This is wirelessly transmitted, via email, to a dashboard so operators can take action to identify toxic events and also reduce the highly costly aeration process.

How Much?

Bactest went into overfunding and raised £850,000

Why?

The money raised in this round will go to aggressively market their first product, Speedy Breedy, and continue building their already impressive network of distributors. In parallel, Bactest will continue developing their second product – Shepherd – a specialist product for managing and monitoring activated sludge (sewage) with a view to reducing the costly aeration process.

What’s the latest?

Congratulations to Bactest who have been awarded The Telegraph Festival of Business’ SME of the Year Award 2014. The judges for the award includes Rachel Bridge (Festival of Business editor, The Telegraph), Trevor Hoyle from Fedex and Myleene Klass who says:

“I was keen to find a highly innovative, original, self-sufficient company that was also turning a profit. Bactest is changing the face of the world as we know it, so I feel it is the worthy winner of the Business SME of the Year award”