£2m EIS scheme to advance Biocaldol’s technology open till April 2009

Biocaldol Ltd (parent company – Caldol Biotech), the developers and owners of a breakthrough technology for producing second-generation biofuels from industrial and agricultural waste, have successfully raised the minimum £750,000 in their recently opened £2m EIS scheme.

Fundraising was led by John Mather, a Financial Advisor in the City firm Helm Godfrey, who joined the Board of Biocaldol in June 2007 to manage the next phase of investments of this fast growing company.

The new funds are to support the commercialisation of Biocaldol’s bioethanol production system and to advance the development of novel microorganisms optimised for a range of feedstocks including food processing wastes, straw, crop residues and even the waste obtained from first generation ethanol production.

The key to Biocaldol’s innovative and proprietary technology is the use of micro-organisms that grow at high temperatures and are constructed to convert a wide range of mixed sugars to bioethanol in high yields. These feedstocks are easily obtained by mild treatments of most food processing and agricultural wastes that are of little or no value, unlike first-generation bioethanol which is derived by yeast fermentation from relatively expensive foods such as corn, wheat or sugar.

Moreover, because Biocaldol fermentations are carried out at high temperature, they are very fast and efficient while the ethanol is readily removed by vacuum evaporation, which reduces distillation costs.

Consequently Biocaldol’s ethanol is expected to be 50% cheaper than Brazilian ethanol (known to be the cheapest in the market today) and will have a much reduced Carbon Footprint. As waste-based feedstocks are abundant, Biocaoldol’s ethanol promises to be the biofuel of the future.

In this difficult financial climate, the timely completion of this key fund-raising phase demonstrates the investors’ commitment for development of low-carbon biofuel technologies from non-food biomass feedstocks. Helm Godfrey expect to successfully complete the fund by April 2009.