Microsol Holdings Ltd, the utilities information and control systems specialist, has raised £4.5 million for its sales and marketing division for future expansion into the US, Australian and European markets. It also intends to increase its product range as well as moving more into the IT end of the industry.
Some £3.5 million has come from ICC Venture Capital - ICC now holds an 18.5 per cent stake in the company. A further £1 million comes from Enterprise Ireland, which already has a 10 per cent shareholding in the business and is securing its shareholding as well as putting some more money into R & D.
Mr Nicholas Koumarianos, who has a background in the international telecommunications industry and has held a number of board-level positions at Cable and Wireless, joins Microsol's board as chairman, and Mr Tom Kirwan, deputy managing director of ICC Venture Capital, also joins the board.
Mr Denis O'Connor, chief executive officer of Microsol, leaves for the US today ( where he will be meeting three partners with whom Microsol hopes to work in the future - Cinergy of Cincinnati, Ohio, Conedison in New York and PG&E in San Francisco. Preliminary discussions also have taken place on potential joint ventures in the US.
There are plans for a strengthening of the company's office in Perth in Western Australia and, with this new funding, Microsol also intends to expand its European business and will concentrate on the Netherlands, Italy, France and Germany. It also has offices in Britain and in the Middle East.
This 10-year old company, which is based in the Pearse Street Enterprise Complex in Dublin, now employs 100 people, having increased its workforce by 40 in the last year. A further 15 people will be required in the next year, although Mr O'Connor says most of the staff gearing up in the last year took place in parallel with the raising of the new funding.
Microsol, which came from a control systems background, is a niche player in the global power utility industry. It provides the kit - a platform/operating system - which goes into power sub-stations for control and information for maintenance, asset and outage management, in addition to real-time control systems. The products are compatible with all conventional communications media and the next release of products will be Webenabled. Major customers include the National Grid in Britain, the ESB, Scottish Power, Northern Ireland Electricity, EVN in Vietnam, TNB in Malaysia, Power Grid in Singapore, Dubai Electricity and Water Authority, the Saudi Electricity Corporation Italian Rail and TZH in the Netherlands.
It also supplies to Alstom in France, ABB in Germany, Switzerland and the US) and Siemens in Germany.
Mr Kirwan said ICC Venture Capital was happy to invest in a company with a leading technology in a global market. "The power utility industry is in a similar position to what the telecoms industry was a decade ago, following deregulation, and offers comparable opportunities."
Deregulation and privatisation is changing the power industry dramatically. Annual industry growth is in excess of 200 per cent. Mr O'Connor said yesterday that the company was in an excellent position to capitalise on the opportunities in the power industry. "Our technology is the perfect platform to meet the growing IT needs of power utilities. The main challenge that we face is positioning to ride the growth."
Some 10.5 per cent of the company is allocated to an employee share option scheme.