A University start-up has secured £1.24m in funding from leading investors to help develop its cutting edge 'lab on a chip' technology.
RAB-Microfluidics was formed by Rotimi Alabi, who developed the idea while working on his PhD alongside Dr Stephen Bowden and Professor John Parnell from the School of Geosciences.
The start-up offers oil analysis that aims to dramatically reduce maintenance and repair costs for heavy equipment by allowing companies to analyse oil samples on site, instead of sending them to laboratories – an often costly and time-consuming process.
The company’s small but powerful ‘lab-on-a-chip’ microfluidics technology offers businesses a quick and easy way to check the condition of oil and the ability to regularly monitor the performance levels of their equipment.
In recent years the business has won a host of high-profile awards, while steadily building a customer base in areas including maritime, renewables, aerospace and defence, processing and manufacturing, oil and gas, and transport.
The £1.24m investment comes from a funding round led by Eos Advisory. Other investors include Scottish Enterprise and London-based Newable Ventures, as well as existing investors.
Alabi, who was supported through the University’s ABVenture Zone to get the business up and running, said that it would help the company’s aims to launch the product in early 2022, as well as increase the workforce.
He added: “RAB Microfluidics has identified that businesses who own and operate lubricated heavy machinery have a significant challenge around how the conditions which ensure the reliability of such machines are monitored.
“We are revolutionising oil testing and analysis services by making conventional laboratory procedures mobile, rapid and routine. We do this by delivering oil analysis more than one thousand times faster and around ten times cheaper than the current approach that is based on sending oil samples to laboratories.”
Eos Advisory’s Managing Partner, Andrew McNeill, said: “RAB-Microfluidics is one of the most exciting early stage Scottish technology companies in the energy sector and we’re pleased to have brought together such a strong set of investors to support Rotimi and his team through their next phase of growth.”