?Izon Science has completed a £1 million ($2 million) funding round in the UK and is moving its global headquarters from Christchurch to England’s Oxford Science Park.
An Izon subsidiary has been operating there since 2010 and Hans van der Voorn, Izon’s executive chairman, is now based there.
Izon turned its first profit in 2012, when van der Voorn told Idealog that the decision to not take on venture capital allowed the company to grow at its own pace, and in the right ways.
At the time he said he hopes Izon eventually ends up in something approaching an open source market model, conducting product development in New Zealand and then developing applications – be they in diagnostics, drug delivery, blood analysis or environmental research – in tandem with other companies.
Izon plans to double the size of its UK team this year. Manufacturing and R&D will continue in Christchurch, where staff numbers are being boosted in line with the company’s overall expansion plans.
“The establishment of the corporate headquarters in the UK allows us better access to European and North American markets and reflects the reality of a more favourable capital raising environment in the UK for global science companies,” says van der Voorn.
Izon is appointing an Oxford CFO, Stephen Dawson, and two UK-based board members: Alex Hambro, who is also non-executive chairman of the Alternative Investment Market-listed Judges Scientific, and Mark Rowan, who is also a non-executive director of AIM-listed Imperial Innovations Group. Izon is itself expecting to list on AIM in due course.
On top of all that Izon is also planning to open offices in China, Germany and India. The company is also opening a second US office in San Diego, CA to add to its facility in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which has been operating since 2011.
The company has developed three instruments that it currently sells into life science research and product development markets:
· the qNano, Izon’s flagship product for nano- and micro-particle measurement;
· the qViro-X, dedicated for virus and vaccine analysis; and
· the qMicro, designed for analysis of cellular samples and injectable drugs.
Read more about the science that Izon has developed here: Izon Science’s US breakthrough
