Collbio seals £250k funding to relaunch business

Collbio has secured more than £250,000 from private investors. Picture: PA

The Glasgow-based company was created in March after Aim-quoted Angel fell into the arms of administrators a month earlier, following the termination of rescue talks with a group of overseas investors.

Collbio, which is run by former Angel acting chief executive Stewart White and ex-operations manager Ross Andrews, took over the failed company’s Glasgow facility, which Angel bought from sausage skin maker Devro last year for £200,000.

The site makes collagen, a material that is used to coat prosthetic implants like hip replacement joints, in wound dressings and as a “scaffold” to which cells can be attached during tissue engineering.

News of the funding deal comes a month after Collbio secured a contract to supply collagen to New York-listed Cardium Therapeutics, continuing a relationship with the Glasgow facility that began under Angel.

White told The Scotsman: “We’re excited by the interest we’ve seen in our company from investors and customers.

“We aren’t just making our own products, we’re also offering services to customers to help them design what they need from us. I think that mixture of work will allow us to grow.”

White said that the company took on its fourth member of staff last week, but remained tight-lipped over how large he would like to see the company grow and over the identities of the “high net worth individuals” who had invested in Collbio.

Alex Clarkson, chief executive of corporate finance firm Diagnostic Capital, which has backed the creation of the company, said: “We are really pleased with the progress already made by Collbio and the abilities of the team and that we have been able to secure investment from a group of prominent high net-worth individuals.”

Diagnostic Capital’s directors have been involved in other deals involving Dundee-based life sciences outfit Axis-Shield, drugs giant AstraZeneca and the secondary management buyout of Motherwell Bridge, which was backed by Kuwait Finance Bank.

Meanwhile, five projects are to share £30,000 in seed funding from Edinburgh BioQuarter, the science park and technology commercialisation vehicle run by Edinburgh University, NHS Lothian and Scottish Enterprise.

Mike Capaldi, commercialisation director at the BioQuarter, said it was the third year that the body had run its innovation funding competition.

“We continue to be impressed by the number of ideas and the level of innovation shown by all entrants,” Capaldi said.

“We have already seen novel products and companies reaching the market from previous years’ winners and I don’t expect this year to be any different.

“This just goes to demonstrate the degree of entrepreneurship and innovation that exists in Scottish life sciences.”