Nanoco announces major milestone payment from US partner

Nanoco Group, the Manchester-based specialist in the development and manufacture of cadmium-free quantum dots and other nanomaterials, will receive a £1.8m payment from its undisclosed US-listed partner.

It follows complewtion of an important milestone in the material development and supply agreement announced this February.

This milestone, the second of three, has been completed in line with the timetable set out in the agreement and reflects rapid progress being made.

The total value of milestones in this programme triggered to date is £2.6m.

Nanoco chief executive Michael Edelman said: “We are pleased to achieve this key milestone for our US partner, which demonstrates Nanoco’s ability to work with, and rapidly meet, our partner’s needs.

“We remain confident in meeting our timelines to begin commercial supply and in addition, delivering on the expansion of our US partnership recently announced.”

As previously disclosed, the partner is funding the capital expenditure required to expand the manufacturing capabilities of Nanoco’s existing Runcorn facility in order to supply the partner with commercial volumes of product.

This process is already under way, with an agreement reached in March to take over 10,000 sq ft of additional space in Runcorn to build a state-of-the-art production facility to commence commercial supply in January 2019.

Nanoco was founded in 2001 and operates a US subsidiary.

It harnesses the power of nano-technology to enable the large-scale production of its cadmium-free CFQD® quantum dots for multiple applications including LCD display, lighting, healthcare, nano-materials, and solar.

Nanoco has non-exclusive manufacturing and marketing licensing agreements in display with The Dow Chemical Company, Merck KGaA of Germany and Wah Hong Industrial Corporation of Taiwan.

Last week The University of Manchester and Nanoco, which is a spin-off from the university, launched Nanoco 2D Materials, which is focused on the development and commercialisation of a new generation of nano-materials.