NCIMB

The investment will be used to accelerate growth in its core microbiology and strain licensing services. Investment will also be used to broaden NCIMB’s service offering to include the selection and development of bacterial strains in its collection for specific customer applications.

By identifying and licensing microbial strains with desirable traits, NCIMB will help industries achieve greater efficiency and sustainability.

Mission Impacts

Our investment in NCIMB aligns with Scotland’s ambitions to lead in innovation and address global challenges such as Net Zero, food security, and sustainable farming.

About NCIMB

NCIMB is the custodian of the UK's largest bacterial culture collection, the National Collection of Industrial, Food, and Marine Bacteria. This unique and strategic asset positions NCIMB at the forefront of industrial biotechnology innovation.

NCIMB provides microbial identification, testing and safe storage services and supplies bacterial stains from its globally recognised collection for commercial and academic use. The business services customers operating in a number of industries, including pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, food & drink, energy, and environmental sectors, from its state-of-the-art laboratory facility in Aberdeen.

“The cultures in NCIMB’s care and collection have the potential to help companies and researchers achieve greater efficiencies and improve sustainability across a range of global applications. Our investment will help the business scale and grow at an accelerated pace. As an impact investor, we are attracted to NCIMB's commercial potential as well as the innovation it can unlock to address global challenges such as climate change and food insecurity.”

Alastair McMillen,

Associate Director of Sustainable Investment

Key Information

Key Mission

Harnessing Innovation

Amount Invested

£1.5m

Location

Aberdeen

Co-investors

IFS Maven Equity Finance

Key Quote

David Milroy, Partner at Maven, said:

“NCIMB is globally recognised for its culture collection and for delivering high-quality microbiology services and is uniquely positioned to meet growing market demand for Contract Research Organisation’s (CRO) with deep domain expertise. This investment will allow the company to scale its commercial operations, expand its licensing business, and enhance its service offering to customers worldwide. We are delighted to join the team at this point in the company’s journey and look forward to helping them further scale the business.”

Edward Green, CEO at NCIMB, said: “I am delighted that NCIMB has secured this investment from Maven and the Bank. The funding is transformational for the business, allowing us to scale in the Northeast of Scotland and better support our customer’s needs in life sciences. In addition, it allows us to deliver our long-term vision to deploy our unique microbial platform to deliver impactful biotechnology solutions addressing grand societal challenges including decarbonisation, climate change, food security and healthy living.

NCIMB