Ingenious today announces that its Infrastructure Ventures EIS Service has invested in Winnow, the technology company behind Winnow Vision, the artificial intelligence tool helping chefs cut food waste in half, as it completes its series B round of funding at $12m. Other co-investors in this fund raising round include Ingka Investments, Mustard Seed, Circularity Capital, D-Ax in addition to Ingenious.  This follows a recent loan from The European Investment Bank (EIB) and in total means the firm has raised $20m in the last month, allowing it to focus on global markets.

Launched in a single staff restaurant in 2013, Winnow has been adopted by more than 1,000 sites globally and is now operating in 40 countries with offices in London, Dubai, Singapore, Shanghai, Cluj-Napoca and Iowa City. Winnow’s latest AI product Winnow Vision, the most advanced food waste technology on the market, has been developed to automate waste tracking, enabling chefs to run more profitable and sustainable kitchens. With global clients already adopting Winnow Vision, from IKEA stores through to the Armani Hotel in Dubai, the demand by companies to drive down food waste in 2019 is increasing.

Kitchens using Winnow tend to see a 40-70% reduction in food waste within 6-12 months, driving food cost savings between 2-8% in total, which improves profit margins whilst operating in an ethical manner.

We are very happy to support Winnow and look forward to seeing the growth of the company which aligns strongly with our investment strategy and sector focus, including resource efficiency.

Guy Ranawake

Investment Director at Ingenious

We are very excited about driving the business forward in our global fight against food waste and we are grateful for the continuous support of our investors. This year we launched our ground-breaking AI product Winnow Vision, and chefs using Winnow around the world are saving $33m worth of food from going to waste annually. We have set a target to save our customers $1bn by 2025, and this investment will accelerate our technology development and business development approach to help achieve this ambition.

Marc Zornes

CEO at Winnow

Winnow Vision works by taking photos of wasted food as it’s thrown away and uses the images to train itself to recognise what has been discarded. Winnow’s systems have already reached and surpassed human levels of accuracy in identifying wasted foods. This means for clients, over time, these systems will enable their kitchens to automatically register food waste without any human interaction. Food will be thrown in the bin and the data will be captured automatically.

The transaction was led by Ingenious’ infrastructure division and represents the third investment from the Infrastructure Ventures EIS Service, following the backing of Over-C, an analytics company focused on operational performance in the workforce management market and Reactive Technologies, a world leading technology platform facilitating the transition to a low carbon future.


The development in Norwood, South London is a GBP3.7 million facility to support a London-based developer known to Ingenious. The loan will fund the development of 15 new build flats and a ground floor commercial unit. The site is located near Norwood Junction station. The scheme will be registered for Help to Buy, which should increase demand and affordability from buyers, terms have been agreed for the commercial unit


Ingenious has also completed a GBP2.6 million loan in Cambridge to a locally based developer with a track record of delivering similar schemes. The loan will fund the development of ten new build flats. The site is walking distance from the city centre and station as well as the River Cam, open space and local shops. Again, the majority of units will be eligible for the Help to Buy scheme.
 
Tom Brown, Managing Director of Real Estate at Ingenious, says: “We are pleased to support good quality development projects as the economy begins its recovery from lockdown. While the return to normality may be slow as we emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, we are cautiously optimistic about the prospects for the real estate sector, particularly the continued demand for residential space. There has been ongoing government support to meet the acute housing shortage in the UK and we are committed to providing flexible financing solutions for our clients’ developments to meet demand.”
 
Formed in 2013, Ingenious Real Estate focuses on senior development and bridging finance, targeting well-designed schemes in good locations across the UK with proven demand. Typical loan terms are 18-24 months, and the team has completed more than GBP450 million worth of transactions since inception. The current portfolio balance is weighted towards residential with the majority of Ingenious developments qualifying for Help to Buy.

Ingenious today announces that its Infrastructure Ventures EIS Service has led a $4m A-series investment round in Shoreline. The Norway-based start-up has built an intelligent field operations and project development platform to help develop profitable wind projects by constructing and operating them efficiently using intelligent schedule optimisation and simulation.

The investment is designed to ensure Shoreline can capitalise on the rapid growth in the renewables market, which it believes has resulted in larger and more expensive projects. Simultaneously, it will allow Shoreline to enhance its service to existing wind farms and assets that require service providers, project developers, OEMs and operators to look for new and more advanced ways to plan and execute projects and daily operations.

Already used on wind projects globally by some of the largest players in the industry, the Shoreline software creates a “digital twin” of all the workflows, resources and assets that can be used in a powerful combination of simulation models and schedule optimisation to analyse numerous complex field service, supply chain and project scenarios. This allows firms to find the optimal solution for these high value projects.

Shoreline also offers an integrated solution with scenario analysis, resource management, reporting, planning and construction management with intelligent optimisation and automation of workflows.

Guy Ranawake, Senior Investment Director at Ingenious, commented: “There has been rapid growth in renewables generation, which we expect to continue as we transition toward a net zero world by 2050. Shoreline’s development platform, which covers design and construction through to operation will allow clients to improve efficiency, consistently helping projects to meet both cost and time targets. We are very happy to support Shoreline and look forward to seeing the growth of the company, which aligns strongly with our investment strategy and renewable energy infrastructure sector focus.”

Ole-Erik V. Endrerud, Founder and CEO at Shoreline, said: “Software is already a central tool in any organisation that constructs and operates large renewable projects, but we have seen an incredible push from the industry as a whole towards new solutions that can help automate workflows and assist technicians and planners to optimise schedules in seconds, in a user friendly and enterprise-ready package.”

The transaction was led by Ingenious’ infrastructure division with participation from existing investors Blue Bear Capital, Alliance Venture and Investinor, which backed the company’s earlier seed round. It represents the sixth investment round from the Infrastructure Ventures EIS Service, following the backing of TeraView, the pioneer and leader in terahertz technology and solutions; 3D Repo, the cloud-based digital platform design pioneers; Winnow, the technology company behind Winnow Vision, the artificial intelligence tool helping chefs cut food waste in half; Over-C, an analytics company focused on operational performance in the workforce management market and Reactive Technologies, a technology platform facilitating the transition to a low carbon future.

Ingenious today announces that its Infrastructure Ventures EIS Service has invested as part of a $6m A-series investment round in TeraView, the pioneer and leader in terahertz technology and solutions.

The investment is designed to ensure that TeraView retains its leadership in the growing terahertz market and continues to provide a high level of support to each of its customers across the world while also accelerating product & technology development, customer support, and sales & marketing by the Company.

TeraView is the leading supplier of terahertz systems to support semiconductor companies and their manufacturing partners in the implementation of advanced 2.5 and 3D packaging technologies for integrated circuits.

Terahertz light lies between infra-red and microwaves, and as such has unique properties which enables it to pass through objects and to transmit images and compositional (spectroscopic) information that is ordinarily hidden. Terahertz is non-destructive, safe and fast, making it the ideal inspection and imaging modality for many applications across a range of industries. For example, advanced packaging techniques allow compact integration of key components such as microprocessors, high bandwidth memory and graphics processors used in computing and data manipulation, providing a means of enhancing performance and minimising power and space requirements in mobile phones and other electronic devices.

All of the major semiconductor companies are now offering their own packaging architectures to differentiate themselves from competitors. TeraView’s proprietary EOTPR technology has been developed with its key customers as an important enabling tool in fault isolation and inspection of these new architectures.

TeraView is also the leading supplier of terahertz systems for the measurement of thickness of multi-layer paints used in the automotive and aerospace industries. New painting technologies such as wet-on-wet formulations are being implemented to improve automotive production line throughput.

Guy Ranawake, Senior Investment Director at Ingenious, commented: “The unique properties of terahertz light combined with the fact that it is non-destructive, safe and fast, make it the ideal inspection and imaging modality for a variety of applications across a range of industries. TeraView is the world’s first and leading company solely focused on this area and has demonstrated the potential of its proprietary technology through its team of dedicated engineers leading to it having the largest number of terahertz systems in the field. We are very happy to support TeraView and look forward to seeing the growth of the company which aligns strongly with our investment strategy and infrastructure sector focus.”

Dr Don Arnone, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of TeraView, commented: “The follow-on investment from Nordson DAGE, coupled with new corporate investors such as Wonik Investments in Korea, underscore the level of interest from industry in TeraView’s technology and solutions that we provide to our customers in our core markets. Support from new financial investors such as Ingenious in London, and Pathfinder H in Korea further demonstrate the global appeal of TeraView’s business to investors.”

The transaction was led by Ingenious’ infrastructure division and represents the fifth investment from the Infrastructure Ventures EIS Service, following the backing of 3D Repo the cloud-based digital platform design pioneers, Winnow, the technology company behind Winnow Vision, the artificial intelligence tool helping chefs cut food waste in half, Over-C, an analytics company focused on operational performance in the workforce management market and Reactive Technologies, a world leading technology platform facilitating the transition to a low carbon future.

Represents the fourth investment from Ingenious’ Infrastructure Ventures EIS Service

Ingenious today announces that its Infrastructure Ventures EIS Service has led a £2.3m A-series investment round in 3D Repo, the pioneers of cloud-based design collaboration in Building Information Modelling (‘BIM’).

The investment represents another major vote of confidence and a financial boost for 3D Repo’s digital construction services business.

Cutting-edge technology by 3D Repo has been successfully deployed on some of the largest and most prestigious construction projects with companies such as Atkins, Balfour Beatty, Bryden Wood, BuroHappold, Canary Wharf Contractors, and Crossrail among others.

Its multi-award-winning digital platform for BIM data is transforming how construction projects are designed and delivered by democratising data, mitigating risk and reducing complexity for everyone involved. Instead of architects, engineers and contractors sharing massive proprietary files in a costly and time-consuming manner, they can simply point their web browser to an encrypted cloud platform to examine each project stage virtually.

Guy Ranawake, Senior Investment Director at Ingenious, commented: “There has been solid growth in the use of BIM worldwide and especially in the UK following the government mandate for BIM Level 2 on all large-scale public sector construction and infrastructure projects since 2016. 3D Repo’s online platform has excellent collaborative tools that allow teams to achieve all the benefits promised by BIM, consistently helping projects meet cost and time targets. We are very happy to support 3D Repo and look forward to seeing the growth of the company which aligns strongly with our investment strategy and infrastructure sector focus.”

Dr Jozef Dobos, Founder and CEO of 3D Repo, said: “3D Repo is a powerful digital construction platform that has already helped many of our clients improve communication, coordination and collaboration. Having the backing of Ingenious means that we can continue to support the country’s foremost digital construction champions and drive the use of 3D Repo on the most challenging infrastructure projects globally.”

The 3D Repo platform allows users to manage 3D model revisions and to highlight potential clashes and safety issues using live collaboration tools which enable the whole project team to work from a single source of truth, anywhere and at any time.

The transaction was led by Ingenious’ infrastructure division and represents the fourth investment from the Infrastructure Ventures EIS Service, following the backing of Winnow, the technology company behind Winnow Vision, the artificial intelligence tool helping chefs cut food waste in half, Over-C, an analytics company focused on operational performance in the workforce management market and Reactive Technologies, a world leading technology platform facilitating the transition to a low carbon future.

Ingenious today announces that it has led an investment round into Over-C Limited, a London-based analytics company focused on operational performance in the workforce management market. Ingenious helped raise an additional £5.5 million in equity funding, bringing the total raised to £10 million.

Over-C’s software uses artificial intelligence, data and analytics to provide industry professionals with key insights for time-critical decision making. Over-C drives behaviours that allow companies to rethink their business and operating models, better quantify risk, uncover new opportunities, reduce losses, and boost profits. The firm currently operates across the UK, Ireland and The Netherlands providing solutions for many industry sectors ranging from transport operators for rail and airports, to shopping centres, stadiums and manufacturers.

The latest round of funding was led by Ingenious’s infrastructure division and represents the second investment from the Infrastructure Ventures EIS Service, following the backing of Reactive Technologies, a world leading technology platform facilitating the transition to a low carbon future.

The investment in Over-C remains in line with the firm’s ongoing drive to seek out high-growth investment opportunities in companies active in the energy, communications, transportation and resource efficiency industries.

Over-C has created and developed a management tool designed to improve mobile and field-based business processes and remote workforce operations. As an active investor and manager, we are delighted to support this award-winning company, setting new standards for managing operational performance. We look forward to working closely with Over-C to delivering solutions at scale.

Guy Ranawake

Managing Director of Infrastructure

This new round of investment provides us with a solid platform of capital to scale our business alongside our customers in what is a worldwide market.

As demand for our solutions has increased, so has the need to continue accelerating our AI capabilities and address a rapidly growing international customer base.

Michael Elliott

Chief Executive Officer at Over-C

The success of the firm to date has been recognised nationally. Its UK partner O2, a leading digital communications company, won ‘The IOT Award’ at the annual Connected Britain Awards 2019 for O2 Smart Compliance, which is powered by Over-C. The IOT Award for 2019 was given to O2, thanks to their joint work work with ScotRail in helping to ensure the security of workers in potentially hazardous situations. ScotRail, Scotland’s national rail service provider, needed a digital solution to help them align with the Department for Transport’s requirements and standards for security and safety, such as real time information, time sensitive prompts and tamper proof records.

Ingenious-backed Stellata has announced today the latest successful milestone in their flagship 100MWAC solar project, Merredin Solar Farm, by signing a Share Purchase Agreement with Risen Energy. The solar project is located in Western Australia’s Wheatbelt , and once operational will be the largest in the state by some margin.

Chinese company, Risen Energy, is one of the largest photovoltaic (PV) module suppliers in the world. The collaboration continues to build momentum for Stellata, with construction of Merredin Solar Farm scheduled to commence in late 2018 and energisation expected in Q3 2019. Stellata will continue to support Risen Energy with the development of the project.

The proposed solar farm will consist of roughly 400,000 single-axis tracking solar PV modules covering an area of roughly 350 hectares across WA’s Central Wheatbelt, with an expected output of 281GWh per annum. On completion of the project, Merredin Solar Farm will be capable of delivering enough energy to power in excess of 42,000 WA homes annually.

Commenting on the agreement, Sebastian Speight, Managing Director at Ingenious Infrastructure said “We are delighted to have reached this milestone and will be supporting Risen Energy into the construction phase at the end of 2018. This is the first project sale that Ingenious Infrastructure has completed outside of the UK and we look forward to replicating this success in the Republic of Ireland and the other international markets where we are currently developing renewable energy assets”.

Commenting on the agreement, Guy Beesley, Managing Director at Stellata Energy said “As a West Australian company our goal has always been to deliver as much renewable energy as possible on to the state’s electricity network. Merredin Solar Farm is an excellent project, ideally located, and will be a major contributor to WA’s renewable generation portfolio. Stellata will be on hand to assist Risen during the construction phase and we look forward to the project being energised in the second half of 2019.”

John Zhong, Project Development and Investment Director at Risen Energy commented “Our first acquisition for the 100 megawatt (AC) Yarranlea Solar Farm in Queensland was completed in early 2018 and construction is underway. Merredin Solar Farm is our second acquisition with the Share Purchase Agreement executed in October 2018.”

Ingenious Infrastructure today announced it has successfully closed an investment into Reactive Technologies in support of the company’s most ambitious phase of growth to date.

Ingenious’ investment in Reactive Technologies is in line with its ongoing drive to seek out high-growth investment opportunities in the energy, communications, transportation and resource efficiency industries for the recently launched Infrastructure Ventures EIS Service. To date, Ingenious Infrastructure has deployed over £700m in energy infrastructure projects across the UK, Republic of Ireland and Australia.

Reactive Technologies is an energy company facilitating the transition to a low carbon future, through the implementation of world-leading technology solutions to address the energy industry’s greatest challenges. Reactive Technologies offers unique measurement and analytics services for grid operators, an energy optimisation platform for corporates and an Enhanced Power Purchase Agreement for renewable generators.

As a result of this investment, Reactive Technologies will be scaling up their activities to deliver services to new customers worldwide. Reactive Technologies’ innovative services enable corporates, renewable generators and grid operators to actively mitigate rising energy costs, optimise their renewable assets in a non-subsidy environment and gain unprecedented real-time grid visibility allowing for faster and more cost-effective decision making.

Commenting on the investment, Guy Ranawake, Investment Director at Ingenious said: “Reactive Technologies have developed and commercialised a number of compelling solutions for the evolving energy sector and have built a strong intellectual property portfolio. As an active investor, developer and manager of a wide range of energy infrastructure assets, Ingenious is delighted to be supporting world-leading innovation in the sector. We look forward to working closely with Reactive to implement the necessary solutions required as we transition towards a lower carbon energy future.”

Marc Borrett, CEO of Reactive Technologies said: “We are delighted that Ingenious has come onboard as the newest member of our investment team. Ingenious has an impressive portfolio of synergistic investments across a number of key geographies and we are excited to work with them on our most expansive growth phase yet. The investment from Ingenious represents a significant financial step forward for Reactive in our ongoing funding journey and underscores the commercial potential for our services worldwide.”

The property investment division of investment manager, Ingenious, has completed its two largest deals to date, totalling £40m of loans for a residential and office development.

Ingenious Real Estate has provided a £21m loan to fund the development of residential property at Villiers Point, Kingston and a further £19m to construct office space in London’s Southwark district.  Ingenious has now deployed over £250m in UK residential and commercial loan facilities since its inception in 2014.

The size of these deals represents a significant milestone for our team as we continue to realise our growth ambitions in the UK property market. The location and quality of the projects is outstanding and we are confident that they will contribute to our track record of successfully executing large scale investment projects.

Tom Brown

Head of Ingenious Real Estate

Villiers Point, Kingston: Ingenious Real Estate has provided a loan of £21m to Ensco Homes Limited to assist with the development of 50 properties, including a ground floor pre-let commercial building, 10 affordable housing properties and 39 private units.

We are delighted to have forged a new relationship with Ingenious. Villiers Point continues Ensco’s focus on quality housing in desirable areas and we look forward to working with Ingenious on this exciting project.

Tom Spanner

Ensco Homes Ltd

The deal was introduced by broker John Philips of Kingswood Associates.

Southwark: The team has also provided a loan of £19m to construct 39 flats and 24,000 square-foot of office space in London’s Southwark district.

The scheme includes a large amount of initially unlet commercial space which demonstrates Ingenious’ ability to provide bespoke and flexible financing for high quality and diverse schemes in the UK.

Ingenious is proud to have been investing in entrepreneurial businesses since our inception in 1998. Over this time, we have helped many innovative companies grow and develop to fulfil their potential.

We are therefore delighted that Mindful Education, one of our investee companies, has ranked 19th in the EdTech 50, a nationwide survey celebrating the people, products and projects that are impacting education.

Mindful Education specialises in creating media-rich professional courses & apprenticeships. The company helps their partners prepare for change by working together to create new and innovative courses that meet the needs of students, government and industry. Their aim is ‘to set a new standard in the digital delivery of education.’ This is a great reflection of the company’s outstanding work and we look forward to future achievements.

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