Below are brief descriptions of some our investments. Further details on our investment criteria can be found in the ADL FAQ's section.

LOGISTICS

ByBox

Avonmore invested in Bybox in March 2003 alongside several other private angel investors.

Bybox has built a network of unattended electronic locker banks to serve as delivery and collection points for parcel deliveries, both in the consumer and business-to-business markets. The Bybox solution is based on market leading Logibag technology which has been field-proven for over 15 years.

Since investment, Bybox has made exceptionally strong progress both in the UK and Internationally and acquired the field-support business of Hays DX, its supplier Logibag and competitor Bearbox. It achieved UK first place in the 2007 Deloitte Fast 50 awards, based on sales growth over the previous five years and in 2009 is expanding into the consumer market with the launch of ‘mybybox’.

More details can be found at www.bybox.com

IT/SOFTWARE/INTERNET

Commerce Decisions Ltd

Avonmore invested in 2001, as lead investor in its initial seed round. A further investment was made as part of a £1.8M financing round alongside Top Technology Ventures and Herald Ventures in July 2003.

CDL has a software package called AWARD that helps organisations making large procurements manage the bidding process more efficiently. The company grew strongly into a profitable, multi-million pound turnover business and a successful exit was achieved through the sale to Qinetic Group plc in October 2008.

Further details on the company can be found at www.commercedecisions.com

GroupSpaces Ltd

GroupSpaces was founded by at team of Oxford University students and received funding from Avonmore Developments in 2008.

GroupSpaces has developed an online toolset that simplifies the way real-world groups manage and promote themselves in an increasingly online world. After a successful pilot programme at Oxford University, the product is now being used by over 1,500 clubs and societies and has over 150,000 members across the UK's top 20 universities. It is also being increasingly used by non-student groups.

Revenue has grown strongly since investment and in addition to securing advertising contracts with over 70 blue-chip firms such as IBM, BP, McKinsey, Procter & Gamble and PwC, the company has developed several non-advertising dependent revenue streams.

Further details can be found at www.groupspaces.com

Specle Ltd

Avonmore was lead investor on Specle’s seed funding round in April 2009.

There is currently a bottleneck in the communication of advertising specifications to agencies and pre-press providers who produce advertising for newspapers and magazines. When creative material is produced for an ad campaign, it must be adapted into possibly 100s of publications worldwide. Each publication around the world has a different page size, different mechanical and colour requirements, and different delivery requirements.

The process of gathering this information for a campaign, and preparing final ads for print, is therefore a time consuming, costly and often painful process. Specle solves this problem by providing an integrated plug-in software solution that automatically checks specifications in real time and reformats the ad-making software for the appropriate publication.

The Specle service has been successfully launched in Belgium and is now being rolled out worldwide.

Further details can be found at www.specle.net

Virtual IT Ltd

Avonmore invested in Virtual IT in September 2002 alongside several angel investors in an investment round that totaled £500k and exercised their option for a second part to that investment in March 2003. This was the initial seed round for the company.

Virtual IT provides IT outsourcing service to the SME market to address the common issues such as wrong level and skill of IT support, slow and unreliable systems, incorrect hardware and software configurations and weaknesses in security and backups at a fixed price per user per month. The customer base includes companies with between 5 and 100 users in a wide range of industries, with a particular focus on service oriented organisations.

Virtual IT has grown significantly since investment. The company now supports over 3,000 desktops and is consistently profitable on a multi-million pound turnover. It was included in the 2007 Deloitte Fast 50 UK awards, as recognition for growth within the technology sector over the last five years.

More details can be found at www.virtualit.biz

Omega Logic Ltd

Avonmore made an investment into this Reading-based firm in 2001 that provided pre-pay phone transaction processing services for the major UK mobile telecom operators. Omega Logic's clients included retailers such as Woolworths, Carphone Warehouse, Dixons Store Group and HMV and it grew strong during the time of our investment.

A successful exit was made through its sale to EPOSS Ltd in January 2003 which was subsequently bought by First Data Corporation in the USA. The founders of Omega Logic have subsequently invested alongside Avonmore in several other deals.

ADVANCED ENGINEERING/MATERIALS/BIOTECHNOLOGY

OCRobotics Ltd

Avonmore invested into the seed round this Bristol-based firm in February 2001 and in 2003 exercised its option to make a further investment in the company.

OC Robotics has developed a revolutionary type of robotic arm that they have termed the "snake arm" robot. This multi-segmented robot has the ability to follow a predetermined or real-time complex path around objects, with the "body" of the robot being able to follow the same path as the "head". This head can be fitted with a number of devices, for example, cameras, a gripper or processing tools.

The company has made good progress since the investment and its customers have included UK MOD, US DOD, Airbus, British Nuclear Group, Areva, British Energy, Rolls-Royce Associates , GE and the Ontario Power Generation. In 2009 it won a Queens award for Enterprise in the Innovation category.

It now has a strong IP portfolio and is consistently profitable.

More details can be found at www.ocrobotics.com

Bac2 Ltd

Avonmore made a significant investment into this company in 2007 as part of a larger funding round which included a seed capital fund and several business angels.

Bac2's has a unique, electrically conductive polymer, ElectroPhen ™, cures at room temperature and can be economically produced in bulk. It’s ideally suited to production of the bi-polar plates and end plates that link individual fuel cells (that generate electricity by combining hydrogen and oxygen to produce water) to produce fuel cell stacks. The company’s expertise encompasses the custom formulation and manufacture of these components and its plates can now be found in commercial use.

Further details can be found at www.bac2.co.uk

Polymertronics Ltd

Avonmore joined a consortium of investors that made a small investment into Polymertronics in December 2008 to investigate light emitting plastics and electronic hardware for wearable photodynamic (PDT) applications.

The main application for Polymertronics’ technology is in the emerging field of disposable medical electronics. This includes new photodynamic therapy ‘light plasters’ for activating photosensitive drugs at specified areas on the body for cancer and other treatments.

Further details can be found at www.polymertronics.com

Cambridge Biostability Ltd

Avonmore invested in Cambridge Biostability Ltd (CBL) in November 2004 alongside a number of other investors including London Seed Capital.

CBL has developed patented technology that allows the stabilisation of heat sensitive vaccines. This is particularly relevant in developing countries where the destruction of vaccines through a break in the cold chain currently causes 50% of the vaccines administered to be non efficacious. CBL’s technology also allows multi vaccines to be administered through a slow-release single dose.

More details can be found at www.biostability.com

Pout Ltd

Avonmore first invested in this London based cosmetics company in August 2003. It supported the company through several funding rounds and an Avonmore representative sat on the board as Investor Director.

Pout’s founders had recognized a gap in the cosmetics market for a brand that was sexy, feminine and fun. With product names such as ‘pop my bubble’ and ‘eye want you’ the company developed a cult following and grew their own brand label to over 180 items, including their ‘hero’ product, ‘Pout Plump’.

A profitable exit was made from this investment through the sale of Pout to Catterton Partners a US private equity firm in February 2007.

Inside Out Beauty Ltd

Inside Out Beauty raised funding from Avonmore in October 2007.

The experienced founders had developed “sip”, a pioneering range of natural flavoured waters, to capitalise on the fast-growing flavoured water market and consumers’ increasing interest in drinks that are free from artificial additives.

The company grew strongly post investment and in January 2009 was sold to Peter Jones, of ‘Dragons Den’ fame.