Carbon Dynamics succesfully raises on Crowd2Fund
Carbon Dynamic, an award winning innovative low energy construction company, that creates affordable and low energy buildings has beaten its crowdfunding target of £80,000 on Crowd2Fund.com. The company now plans to use the funds to scale up their business to help solve the UK wide housing crisis.
The business, first established in 2012, by Matthew Stevenson, is the only modular manufacturer currently based in Scotland. Modular design is an approach that subdivides a system into smaller parts which can be independently created and then used in different systems. The benefit of this is that it is a more sustainable, and cheaper solution. This provides better value for buyers, whilst not skimping on quality. This means that the company are able to build properties within a lead time of just four weeks, with residents being able to move into them five days after completion.
In 2015 Carbon Dynamic won an Edge Award, and was recognised as one of Scotland’s most promising startup companies. They won the award based on their growth potential and their ability to create new jobs in the Scottish economy.
Stevenson was inspired to start the company due to wanting to completely reengineer the way buildings are design and built, with the end user being the focus. This interest stems back to his formal training at the Royal College of Art in Fine Art and Sculpture, which focused on architectural shapes and innovative uses of new materials.
The campaign beat its initial target of £80,000, and raise £87,000 in total, from 50 different investors. Carbon Dynamic was the first campaign on Crowd2Fund.com, to benefit from being included as part of the IFISA. All of the investors used this mechanism to place their funds, and will benefit from tax free interest growth.
The company now plan to use the funds to introduce a number of new innovative processes to scale up demand, in order to help solve the housing crisis, with the UK currently needing a extra one million new homes a year.
Stevenson says, “We are concluding the implementation of our Design for Manufacturing and Assembly systems and processes, and we will use some of the funds to enable the full integration of DFMA across the business. The remaining funds will be use to bolster our working capital position in order to help service the £12m of projects in our sales pipeline.”
Carbon Dynamic choose to raise their debut funds due to crowdfunding due to Crowd2Fund.com offering a direct and innovative approach.
“We are innovative in everything that we do and traditional or conventional approaches are often not where we can provide or achieve best value,” said Stevenson. “The crowdfunding approach is about engagement and being able to demonstrate uniqueness and core values as commercial strengths, which better suits us than the more conventional approach offered by banks.”
