Andor Technology, the Belfast scientific equipment manufacturer, will today announce a major new £2.1 million sterling funding injection from venture capital firms in Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom.
The company, which designs and manufacturers high-tech scientific cameras, has closed its latest equity round by becoming the first in Northern Ireland to secure funding from Lloyds TSB Development Capital.
The UK venture capital group is investing £1.5 million in Andor, while the Northern Ireland firm, Crescent Capital, one of the Belfast company's original backers, will put in a further £600,000.
According to Mr Colin Walsh, managing director of Crescent Capital, the deal could also help facilitate further technology transfer from universities to the commercial marketplace.
"Andor is a real Northern Ireland success story having started out as a Queen's University spin-out sponsored by QUBIS.
Over the past four years, the company has quadrupled its revenues on the back of our initial investment in 1997. The west Belfast-based company, which last year won a UK Queen's Award for Enterprise, was founded in 1989 by physicists from Queen's University in the North.
In the last three years it has more than doubled its exports to become one of the market leaders developing and producing specialist instruments used in spectroscopy and scientific imaging.
Lloyds TSB Development Capital said one of the reasons it had invested in the Northern Ireland company was the company's consistent profit growth, despite difficult economic conditions.
Today Andor employs 74 with its products mainly used by professionals in the field of material analysis, such as drug discovery, gene analysis and forensic science. Dr Hugh Cormican, one of Andor's original founders and its current managing director said the latest investment injection would be used to enlarge the business in new and existing markets.
Earlier this year Andor was listed as one of Ireland's fastest growing technology in Deloitte & Touche's Fast 50 league table.
Crescent Capital said the latest statistics from the British Venture Capital Association show Northern Ireland attracted £23 million (or 0.5 per cent) of total venture capital funds raised last year.
