INVESTMENT in Scottish life sciences companies was up by 27 per cent to £85 million in the 2017/18 year, driven in part by a surge in international venture capital support, figures from industry body Life Sciences Scotland have revealed.
Scottish Enterprise’s investment arm, the Scottish Investment Bank, invested a total of £8m to companies including BioFilm, Calcivis and CareSourcer and leveraged a further £104m on their behalf.
Among the international venture capital firms to also provide funding throughout the year were Epidarex Capital, Lundbeckfonden Ventures and Julz.
Among the business to raise finance were wearable technology firm Snap40 (now called Current), which raised $8m, and dental demineralisation business Calcivis, which raised £3.15m.
Dave Tudor, co-chair of the Life Sciences Scotland industry leadership group, said investment in the many start-ups that populate the life sciences sector is vital to its survival, adding that being able to raise finance from venture capitalists and angel investors “is a crucial part of growing a life sciences business”.
“Few companies will be able to fuel all their ambitions for growth through their own cashflow or bank lending, and so bringing on board external investors can be key to their expansion plans,” Mr Tudor commented.
Larger overseas business suck as pharmaceuticals giant GSK are also continuing to invest in the Scottish life sciences sector, with the EY Annual Attractiveness Survey finding that Scotland has been the most attractive place outside London for UK R&D investments in five of the last six years.
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