In Focus: Nanoco sets sights on second factory
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NANOCO, the pioneering nanotechnology firm, is already planning a second production facility which it believes would have the potential to generate annual revenues of around £60m.
The Manchester-based business makes quantum dots – tiny fluorescent particles of semiconductor material which have the ability to emit light. They are in demand by the makers of liquid crystal displays for computers, TVs and phones because they consume less power than existing systems.
The company has just opened its first commercial manufacturing facility at The Heath Business and Technical Park, on the site of an ICI research centre in Runcorn, which has enabled the company to scale up production of quantum dots from milligrams to its first kilograms.
It has rivals in the US such as Nanosys and QD Vision but it is the only firm producing quantum dots on such a scale and free of heavy metals such as cadmium.
Following last month’s successful £15m insitutional placing the Aim-listed firm is now looking at sites for a factory that would enable it to push production from several kilograms a month to around 150kg a year with a market value of some $100m, or £60m. The dots currently have a value of around £3,000 per gram but this is expected to fall as volumes increase.
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They are applied to LEDs used in TVs in the form of a resin. Two kilograms of dots would be enough for around 100 million LEDs. A typical 40-inch screen uses 500.
“Next year’s demand for LEDs in TVs is 40 to 45 billion,” said chief executive
Michael Edelman, pictured. “We are in the process of ramping up to get into that. The recent fundraising was around accelerating the move to a second facility.”
“Two kilos is not enough, one customer will more than take that. But you can’t just jump to 100kg a month. We are doing it in a very organised fashion.”
The company has taken on Andrew Gooda, a former director at the chemical multinational Croda, as manufacturing director and hopes to benefit from the North West’s skilled chemicals workforce when it takes on around 20 staff to work in the new facility which should be up and running by the middle of next year.
“The North West is very good for us because it was the birth place of the chemical industry in the UK,” said Mr Edelman. “ICI was part of that and Runcorn was the epicentre for ICI development.”
Nanoco, which was established in 2001 to commercialise research from the University of Manchester and Imperial College, London, is also applying its technology to solar panels and anti-counterfeiting devices.
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