Molendotech, an award-winning University of Plymouth spinout company, has secured an investment of more than £1.2million to push forward the development of its pioneering water testing technology.
The new funding will enable the company to create an operational unit based in the Health and Wellbeing Innovation Centre, managed by the University in Truro through its Cornwall Innovation programme.
This will be in addition to its existing base at the University's Brixham Laboratory, with the aim of having one centre focused on research and product development and the other on the validation of its technologies.
As part of an oversubscribed funding round, the company secured £500,000 from the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Investment Fund, £500,000 from Exeter-based venture capital firm QantX, and a further £230,000 from existing private investors and the management team.
The new investment will support the company on the commercialisation and development of its product Bacterisk+, an easy-to-use, portable and rapid test to monitor and detect pathogens found in water.
It is something that has potentially never been more critical, in light of recent headlines about coastal and river pollution, meaning Bacterisk+ has the potential to address a major public health and environmental concern.
Within that, most water testing methods take more than 48 hours to assess the safety for use making the current decision-making tools not very useful as water quality can change rapidly.
The 25-minute test invented and developed by Molendotech is being used by water utilities, regulators and other interest groups to minimise the exposure of the population to bacteria and track sources of pollution.
Molendotech was founded by Professor Simon Jackson at the University of Plymouth, in 2018.
Its customer base includes environmental agencies, water companies, and national and local government authorities, and its methods and assays are protected by patents in several countries including the US, UK, Australia and Japan.
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