Foresight portfolio company, The Naked Deli, has opened its world-first airport outlet at Newcastle International Airport.

Maven Capital Partners has led the £2.5 million investment in Bright Network, a media technology platform which enables blue-chip employers to reach, identify and recruit high-quality graduates and young professionals. The transaction includes a £2.15m investment by Maven VCTs, together with £0.4m from existing and new angel shareholders. 

Calculus Capital has invested £2m in software company CloudTrade.

CloudTrade’s technology – which has been patented in Europe, the US and Australia – enables companies to automatically process electronic documents such as invoices and sales orders received by email.

The software extracts information from a human-readable, machine-generated document, such as a PDF, validates it and then converts it into a data file that is fed directly into the company’s accounting system, without human intervention.

NVM Private Equity has invested £3.1 million of growth capital into Midlands-based Clarilis, a high-growth technology business providing drafting automation solutions to the legal industry.

NPIF Maven Equity Finance, part of the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund (NPIF), and managed by Maven Capital Partners, has invested £750,000 in Lancashire-based Extreme Low Energy, a proven technology platform, which stores and efficiently distributes low voltage DC power, and which targets a number of different sectors.

BGF has backed tech-focused Click Travel, Britain’s fastest growing business travel management company, with a multi-million pound investment. This follows a sustained period of technological advances and new client wins. 

Headquartered in Birmingham, the business was founded in 1999 by brothers Simon McLean, CTO and James McLean, CFO. Click Travel’s proprietary technology platform, travel.cloud, provides the look, feel and usability of a consumer site alongside services that help businesses reduce the cost and complexity of business travel.

Maven Capital Partners has further expanded its investment team with the appointment of Jamie Fraser to help manage funds across the North East. Joining as Investment Manager to source and complete deals on behalf of Maven’s private equity funds, Jamie will also help manage the £27m North East Development Capital Fund (NEDCF), supported by the European Regional Development Fund and the £20m Finance Durham Fund, established by Durham County Council.

Maven Capital Partners has completed a £2 million investment in Lending Works, a leading UK peer-to-peer lender. The total transaction value also includes £800,000 of funding from NVM Private Equity, Pollen Street Capital, and a small number of business angels. The investment will be used to strengthen Lending Works’ sales and marketing function to support the continued expansion of the business, capitalising on the significant growth forecasted in the P2P market, and enabling it to originate and convert more loans through its established sales channels, such as brokers and price comparison sites.

NVM Private Equity has invested £1.5 million of growth capital into Newcastle based hiPSC company Newcells Biotech alongside existing investors Northstar Ventures, who have provided a further £500k bringing the total round to £2 million.

Founded in 2015 and headquartered at the world-renowned International Centre for Life in Newcastle (an incubator space for young and established biotechnology companies) Newcells is a successful, early-stage, life-sciences spinout from Newcastle University, which is leading the way in the development of Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (hiPSCs) for efficacy and toxicity testing in the drug development sector.

Aistemos, the leading provider of patent analytics software, has today announced it has secured an investment of £3m. Beringea, the international growth capital investor, led the Series A funding round. The funding will support the expansion of Aistemos’ core product, Cipher, and the development of a range of products focused on specific sectors, designed to enable businesses to access data about patented technology with greater speed and accuracy.

Apex Housing Group, an innovative airspace property developer, has received a £6.25m investment from BGF to accelerate its growth ambitions in London’s growing rooftop development market, estimated to be worth up to £54bn.

The Prime Minister has unveiled the government's new industrial strategy, which is intended to put the UK at the forefront of the global economy - and, argues Kin Capital's Tom Hopkins, EIS and VCTs are perfectly positioned to help.