Member Article

£8.76m investment for Portsmouth pipe manufacturer

A £8.76m investment in Portsmouth’s Magma Global Limited will support the building of piping for the oil and gas sector.

The Business Growth Fund has invested £8.76m in the project, with additional funding coming from Canadian investor Kern Energy Partners and Danish venture capitalists NES.

Magma design and manufacture carbon fibre pipes for the oil and gas industry, and as production goes into deeper water and harsher environments, existing technologies are reaching the limit of their capabilities.

The investment will be used to install a new manufacturing facility in Southampton, where up to 250km of pipe will be made and stored on spools.

It will allow Magma to export pipe to international markets, and the move should create an additional 100 jobs.

Martin Jones, founder and CEO of Magma Global, commented: “Our ambition is to build Magma into a large export led manufacturing business founded on leading edge technology and the best engineering talent. In the last 2 years we have grown from a team of 5 to a total workforce of 90 and an order book of in excess of $70m.

“Kern and NES backed us from the beginning and have been a great support, as we take on more capital to accelerate our growth it’s great to have a UK investor come on board.

“BGF has taken a flexible and accommodating approach to this investment round which has smoothed the process of integrating with the needs of our current investors and the management team, this has been very important to us.

“We are delighted to welcome Mike Sibson from BGF to our Board, he brings both relevant sector experience and a pragmatic approach. We look forward to working with BGF to build a significant UK manufacturing business.”

Mike Sibson, BGF’s investment director who joins the board of Magma Global, added: “We are very pleased to be co-investing with Kern and NES to support Magma in the next stage of its development.

“The team has a great track record, and in particular some very special expertise in design and manufacture of composite structures. I have worked with the team before and I am delighted to have the opportunity to work with them again on Magma.

“Magma is a great fit for BGF. We are backing an experienced and ambitious team to build manufacturing capacity in a high technology business which will export to the international oil and gas market.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .