Sitehop – the Sheffield-based network encryption specialist backed by Mercia Ventures – has raised £5m in a seed funding led by Amadeus Capital Partners and Manta Ray Ventures. Mercia also participated in the round using funding from the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund (NPIF) and its EIS funds, along with the founders of Event Horizon Capital & Osney Capital and angels including Silicon Catalyst founder Rick Lazansky and NEAR founder Illia Polosukhin.

Sitehop addresses a critical challenge in the digital age: that current software encryption solutions slow down communications networks by adding delay to the system. Communications infrastructure providers face the choice of incurring significant additional costs by laying down extra fibre capacity to minimise the latency caused by encryption or to run lines without encryption which creates unacceptable enterprise risks.

Sitehop helps businesses proactively handle the escalating threat level from increasingly sophisticated cyber criminals, with hardware-enforced enterprise encryption. Mercia first invested in Sitehop in early 2023 to help it commercialise its technology. Its flagship product, SAFEblade 1100, now offers a significantly more secure alternative to software-based solutions, being able to support over 4000 secure tunnels at once with an ultra-low encryption or decryption latency of less than 900 nanoseconds and at a data throughput of 100Gbps. This low latency is crucial in any scenario involving high bandwidth network traffic, such as data centres, the cloud, or edge computing environments.

Melissa Chambers, CEO, Sitehop, said: “This investment allows us to expand our global reach, with sales and support engineering staff in Brazil, the US, India, and grow our Yorkshire headquarters. We will be adding engineers and production workers and moving into a new Sheffield location. “The investment will also enable Sitehop to pursue its technology roadmap – fleshing out the range of SAFE products securing all types of data-in-motion, and developing parallel products using our world-class skillsets in cryptography and programmable hardware design. We aim to get Sitehop’s products into the backbone of most of the world’s networks in the next few years.”

Nick Kingsbury, Partner, Amadeus Capital Partners, said: “Sitehop is bringing a novel hardware-based approach to a fundamental challenge facing the providers of the essential network infrastructure underpinning our digital society. “The flexibility and scalability of Sitehop’s data encryption technology makes it accessible to SMEs as well as large enterprises, meaning there need be no weak link in our defence against cyber criminality.”

Lawrence Barclay, Managing Director, Manta Ray Ventures, said: “We are really excited to partner with Melissa, Ben and the Sitehop team in the next phase of their journey. We have been incredibly impressed at how thoughtful and effective an approach they have taken to the increasingly critical challenge of network security. “We are past the point of dependency on data connectivity and need to ensure enough attention is put on how it is secured without compromise on performance and with important attention to energy efficiency.”

Animalcare Group, the York-based animal health business, has disposed of its majority shareholding in Identicare to BG Bidco 21 Limited, a newly incorporated company owned by funds managed by Bridgepoint Advisors II Limited, for a cash consideration of £24.9m. Animalcare Group said the transaction represents a significant crystallisation of value for the company and its shareholders from a non-core asset, and allows it to focus on growth in its pharmaceutical-based animal health market. Identicare is a UK-based pet microchipping and pet owner-focused services company. As part of the Group’s strategy to focus on pharmaceuticals and to drive growth through launching innovative products, Identicare was separated from the UK pharmaceuticals business within Animalcare Ltd in March 2021, with specialist leadership brought in. The disposal of Identicare strengthens the balance sheet of the Group, enabling it to accelerate organic and inorganic growth initiatives. Jenny Winter, Chief Executive Officer, said: “I’m very proud to see what we have achieved with Identicare in recent years. Today’s decision to crystallise the value from the sale is the logical next step, significantly strengthening our balance sheet and giving us additional financial flexibility and firepower as we concentrate on growing our pharmaceutical-focused animal health business.”

Snaith-based life sciences company Croda reports adjusted profit before tax for the last year down 33% to £308.8m – but the number isn’t unexpected and the group expects the figure for 2024 to be between £260m and £300m. CEO Steve Foots says the firm is well-positioned for market recovery, adding: “Our performance this year reflects the prolonged destocking and weaker macro environment that has followed two record years post the pandemic. “Despite the financial impact of this ongoing uncertainty, the technology trends that will drive our future growth have not changed with a continued transition to sustainable ingredients and biologics. We have successfully realigned our portfolio with these megatrends and our strategy is delivering with continued customer demand for innovation and sustainable ingredients.

“In Consumer Care, sales of new and protected products increased, and F&F outperformed once again. In Life Sciences, our Pharma business is leading the industry in biologics drug delivery with more partnerships and product launches strengthening our pipeline. Despite the challenging macroeconomic backdrop, we have continued to invest for the future, adding biotech-derived active ingredients to our portfolio through our acquisition of Solus Biotech and expanding capacity in Pharma whilst maintaining strict capital and cost discipline.

“Given the ongoing uncertainty in our end markets, the recovery trajectory for each of our business units remains difficult to predict and the range of possible outcomes in 2024 is therefore wider than usual at this stage of the year. Overall, however, the Group expects to deliver mid to high single digit percentage sales growth in 2024, excluding the c.$60m of Covid-19 lipid sales in 2023, with higher sales volumes more than offsetting lower price/mix.”

University of Leeds spinout adsilico has received an investment boost to scale up its work and accelerate life-saving benefits for patients. Northern Gritstone and Parkwalk Advisors have announced a combined £3.5 million investment into the computational medicine company. adsilico is developing an end-to-end in-silico trials (IST) solution based on virtual ‘synthetic’ patient populations that will provide better and safer medical devices earlier to patients. ISTs use modelling and simulation to produce scientific evidence of device performance and safety, before testing in human clinical trials. It will reduce costs and accelerate research and development timescales for medical device developers, while reducing animal experimentation and partially replacing costly and potentially harmful human trials. Based on research funded by the Royal Academy of Engineering at the University of Leeds’ Schools of Medicine and Computing, adsilico has developed an IST technique that combines multiple data sources and uses generative AI to create synthetic populations on a scale ideal for clinical trials. Northern Gritstone’s investment of £2m sits alongside £1.5m from co-investor Parkwalk Advisors. The combined seed round investment will be used to fund essential development in adsilico and build the team. Professor Alejandro Frangi, founder of adsilico, said: “Medical devices follow a lengthy evaluation with a tiny amount of scientific evidence currently derived from computer modelling and simulation. “The cost is ever-increasing, delaying life-saving benefits to patients. Northern Gritstone’s and Parkwalk’s investment and support will enable adsilico to offer a scalable solution to the medical device market to produce evidence on an unprecedented scale.” Professor Nick Plant, Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research and Innovation at the University of Leeds, said: “This funding will help to redefine the development of medical devices, enhancing performance and safety with more certainty and speed, and most importantly, prior to human testing. “It is a further testament to Leeds’ pioneering approach and strength in driving innovation to accelerate the adoption of new health technologies, delivering improvements and impact directly to healthcare professionals and patients.” Duncan Johnson, CEO of Northern Gritstone, said: “Computational modelling has the potential to revolutionise the MedTech industry and reduce the risks to humans. Northern Gritstone is delighted to support adsilico’s team, who once again demonstrate that great science and technology-enabled businesses are being created in the North of England.” Moray Wright, CEO of Parkwalk Advisors, added: “We are proud to be backing adsilico through this seed funding round. adsilico’s pioneering approach to in-silico trials has potential to significantly accelerate the pace of innovation in medical device development. It’s fantastic to see this university spin-out take another step forward on its vision to bring safer and more efficient medical devices.”