Member Article

Interview: Dr Andy Round, investment director at SPARK Impact

SPARK Impact is an active life science investor in the UK, it manages the North West Fund for Biomedical which is a £30 million fund providing finance from £50,000 to £1.5 million to businesses.

The investments support a broad range of needs from start-up and early stage development through to expansion plans for trading businesses

To date, the team at SPARK Impact has invested more than £24.5 million of its £30 million allocation.

Its portfolio includes high growth companies involved in pharmaceuticals (research, development and manufacture of drugs and biopharmaceuticals); biotechnology; diagnostics; clinical research organisations; contract manufacturing organisations; analytical services and sciences; and healthcare technologies and medical devices.

The North West Fund for Biomedical is a sub-fund of The North West Fund, a substantial pot of money jointly financed by the European Regional Development Fund and the European Investment Bank and available to invest in small and medium sized businesses in the North West of England to support their start-up, development and growth

Investment director at SPARK Impact, Dr Andy Round, spoke to Bdaily: “There is a real North South divide with 75-80% of venture capital investment still occurring in the South of England.

“The North West has been neglected and there was a noticeable shortage of cash.

“As an investment director you have to balance the high risk investments with the lower risk investments.

“We’ve been quite fortunate and around 30% of our portfolio is profitable at the moment.

“We hope we’ve contributed positively and we have been well received and made to feel very welcome in the North West.

“We want to stay in the North West for the next 10 - 15 years.

“We hope to raise twice as much as what we have invested and are also hoping that new funds become available soon.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Sophia Taha .