- Seven figures are being invested in a low-carbon bioplastics developer by a university spin-out vehicle.
- Northern Gritstone is spearheading a funding round for Floreon.
- Over the past year, Northern Gritstone has backed several businesses.
Seven figures are being invested in a low-carbon bioplastics developer by a university spin-out vehicle that has raised hundreds of millions of pounds to support some of Britain’s most promising start-ups.
As per Sky News’s understanding, Northern Gritstone is spearheading a funding round for Floreon, a company that utilizes technology developed at Sheffield University.
Northern Gritstone
Shaun Chatterton founded Floreon, a bioplastics company, in 2011, and Northern Gritstone, an investment firm based in the UK, has invested £312 million in it. The business uses bioplastics, which are similar to the typical plastic polymer used in the automotive industry and are derived from plants like corn and sugar cane.
Complementing Northern Gritstone’s “Profit with Purpose” tenet, Chatterton seeks to provide brands with an alternative product to lessen the environmental impact of their plastic products.
Over the past year, Northern Gritstone has backed several businesses, including one that raised £312 million from institutional and pension funds.
Additionally, the company is emerging as one of the UK’s leading investors in intellectual property-rich companies and academic spin-outs. Its investors include M&G Investments, Lansdowne Partners, and Andrew Law, CEO of Caxton Associates.
The University of Leeds, Manchester, and Sheffield founded the company. The business concentrates on spinouts in fields like energy, advanced materials, cognitive computing, and health technology.
The academic institutions are home to 38 Nobel Prize winners and boast a talent pool of over 8,400 committed researchers and 33,000 postgraduate students, collectively generating an annual income of over £2.6 billion.
