Biomedical fund reaches £10m milestone
THE North West Fund for Biomedical, managed by SPARK Impact, says it has now invested more than £10m in small and medium-sized businesses.
The £25m fund, which invests in diagnostic, medical device and pharmaceutical firms, is part of the £155m North West Fund, financed by the European Regional Development Fund and the European Investment Bank.
The biomedical pot can make equity investments of between £50,000 and £1.5m and must invest the money by the end of 2015.
Two recent investments of £125,000 in back therapy device company LumbaCurve and £250,000 in Oxtox, which has developed a drug detection device intended for use by police officers, pushed the fund to the £10m mark two years after its launch in December 2010.
Penny Attridge, senior investment director at SPARK Impact, said: “Since the inception of the fund, we have set out to find the most promising, innovative businesses and individuals whose work has the potential to make a real impact on the biomedical industry.
“In that time, we have discovered an impressive level of talent in the region beyond our expectations, while we have also been able to attract some high calibre businesses to the North West.”
