Funding for dental group to increase global sales
YORKSHIRE-BASED dental healthcare group Neoss has successfully achieved £5.5m of new funding to invest in research and expand its global sales network.
The Harrogate company, which specialises in dental implants to replace missing teeth, has raised the money from its major shareholders, venture capital groups MMC Ventures and Delta Partners, and Medtronic, together with a number of high net worth individuals.
Medtronic is an $13.5bn turnover US medical products group that invested in Neoss in 2006. Based in Minneapolis, it the largest indepedent medical products group in the US valued at $36bn and quoted on the New York Stock Exchange.
Neoss was advised on the fundraising by Leeds-based law firm Lupton Fawcett.
Michael J. Dormer, chairman of Neoss, said: “We are exceptionally pleased with the on-going confidence of our existing shareholders as we successfully grow Neoss toward becoming a major company in the dental implant field”.
Neoss sells its innovative products in 14 countries including the US, Europe and Australia and will invest the funds into research and development and expanding its global sales network.
The company, which was ranked 20th in the 2008 Sunday Times Tech Track 100, was founded by former University of Leeds dentistry expert Professor Neil Meredith and Fredrik Engman to develop a novel dental implant system for replacing missing teeth.
Their method simplified the existing implant system, which involved between 1,500 and 3,000 components, reducing that significantly.
Dental implants are titanium “roots” that are placed into the jawbone to support a crown to form an artificial tooth. Developed more than 30 years ago, they are now the treatment of choice for replacing missing teeth and give results that feel like a normal tooth to the patient as well as looking realistic.
Prof Meredith has held positions in dentistry at the universities of Leeds, Bristol and Gothenburg, and at the Eastman Dental Institute in London. In 1998 he co-founded a spin-off company with Imperial College, London, to exploit Osstell, a unique test method for measuring implant performance which is now the world standard.
Fredrik Engman worked as a surface development engineer at Volvo before joining Nobel Biocare as a senior product development engineer where he made a number of significant inventions in the dental implant area.
