c‑LEcta, a world-lead­ing biotech­nol­ogy com­pany focused on enzyme engi­neer­ing and appli­ca­tions in reg­u­lated mar­kets like food and pharma, has closed a financ­ing round with Capri­corn Ven­ture Part­ners and the Ger­man invest­ment com­pany bm|t. The cap­i­tal increase pro­vides the com­pany with growth cap­i­tal as well as valu­able access to an inter­na­tional network. 

c‑LEcta already has a diver­si­fied share­holder struc­ture. In addi­tion to the founder, Dr. Marc Struhalla, pri­vate indus­trial investors and Ger­man insti­tu­tion­als, the com­pany has now expanded its cir­cle of share­hold­ers by attract­ing inter­na­tional investors. c‑LEcta has received growth cap­i­tal from two new share­hold­ers. Lead investor, Capri­corn Ven­ture Part­ners, is an inde­pen­dent, inter­na­tion­ally ori­ented invest­ment com­pany, based in Leu­ven, Bel­gium. Capri­corn invests in inno­v­a­tive, tech­nol­ogy dri­ven com­pa­nies and has a mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary team of expe­ri­enced invest­ment pro­fes­sion­als. Capri­corn invested through two funds, namely the Capri­corn Sus­tain­able Chem­istry Fund NV and Quest for Growth NV. The Ger­man invest­ment com­pany bm|t invests in high-growth tech­nol­ogy com­pa­nies led by entre­pre­neur­ial teams. bm|t invested via the MFT Mit­tel­stands-Fonds Thürin­gen GmbH & Co. KG. These new funds are planned to be par­tic­u­larly invested in the approval, launch and scale-up of prod­ucts from the project pipeline, fur­ther devel­op­ment of the pipeline as well as the expan­sion of inter­na­tional sales.

Mr. Lud­wig Goris, Invest­ment Man­ager of Capri­corn, com­mented on the invest­ment in c‑LEcta: “We see that global mega trends and chal­lenges in human nutri­tion are paving the way for indus­trial biotech com­pa­nies like c‑LEcta. Since its foun­da­tion, c‑LEcta has built up a remark­able track record of tech­nol­ogy and prod­uct devel­op­ment and has been able to val­i­date that through a grow­ing cus­tomer base of lead­ing pharma, chem­i­cal and food ingre­di­ent com­pa­nies. In addi­tion, we were impressed by the highly qual­i­fied team in Leipzig. Founder and CEO Dr. Marc Struhalla and his moti­vated team have cre­ated a great com­pany that has arrived at an attrac­tive inflec­tion point where the cur­rent prod­uct pipeline forms the foun­da­tion for an accel­er­ated growth curve. We are proud to lead this growth cap­i­tal round and con­tribute to the suc­cess of c‑LEcta.”

Kevin Reeder, CEO of bm|t added, “bm|t, which has a sub­stan­tial life sci­ences port­fo­lio, is very opti­mistic about its invest­ment in c‑LEcta. The company´s strong team, track record of suc­cess­ful devel­op­ment, and a highly com­pelling prod­uct pipeline were extremely impres­sive. We feel c‑LEcta is well-posi­tioned to tran­si­tion to a high-value biotech­nol­ogy prod­uct com­pany.” The two new investors expand the group of share­hold­ers, which pre­vi­ously included the fol­low­ing investors: SHS Gesellschaft für Beteili­gungs­man­age­ment mbH, High-Tech Grün­der­fonds Man­age­ment GmbH, KfW Banken­gruppe, Dr. Marc Struhalla, Warn­ing Beteili­gungs GmbH, Dr. Bader Beteili­gungs GmbH, and Arthur Stein­metz Beteili­gungs GmbH.

In order to rein­force man­age­ment and the board and sup­port the antic­i­pated growth, Thomas Pfaadt (45) recently joined c‑LEcta as CFO. He enriches the com­pany with his expe­ri­ence in cor­po­rate finance and M&A. Pre­vi­ously Thomas Pfaadt worked for a pri­vate equity-owned oper­a­tor of reha­bil­i­ta­tion clin­ics as well as for a fam­ily-owned inte­grated health­care group. He also gained expe­ri­ences as an invest­ment banker and con­sul­tant with a strong focus on the health­care sec­tor. He com­mented on what excites him about c‑LEcta: “c‑LEcta is a young, lean, and dynamic com­pany and a global player at the same time. We are fight­ing the seri­ous chal­lenges of today’s human nutri­tion. A grow­ing pop­u­la­tion and a grow­ing demand for healthy nat­ural food require solu­tions from enzyme tech­nolo­gies that the chem­i­cal indus­try can­not pro­vide. We are pleased to have won these two new investors to finance our work in address­ing these large opportunities.”

c‑LEcta is a fully inte­grated biotech­nol­ogy com­pany based in Leipzig, Ger­many, with focus on enzyme engi­neer­ing and appli­ca­tion in reg­u­lated mar­kets like food and pharma. c‑LEcta cur­rently employs around 60 peo­ple. The com­pany is well diver­si­fied and cov­ers a large part of the value chain from dis­cov­ery to engi­neer­ing to the com­mer­cial pro­duc­tion of enzymes as well as the man­u­fac­tur­ing of other high-qual­ity biotech­nol­ogy prod­ucts, either as in-house devel­op­ments or in close coöper­a­tion with the indus­try. Over the last five years, c‑LEcta has con­ducted more than 30 enzyme engi­neer­ing projects with a suc­cess rate of >90%. Only a few weeks ago, the com­pany announced a major break­through as the first com­pany to develop a process to enable the mass-pro­duc­tion of a plant-based sweet­ener with a real sugar-like taste. In addi­tion, two fur­ther food ingre­di­ent prod­ucts with high mar­ket poten­tial are in an advanced devel­op­ment stage and the project pipeline com­prises sev­eral promis­ing can­di­dates address­ing the multi-bil­lion-euro food ingre­di­ents mar­ket. This growth financ­ing is intended to raise c‑LEcta to a new level and ele­vate the focused food ingre­di­ents from the project pipeline to com­mer­cial scale production.

CEO Dr. Marc Struhalla com­mented on c‑LEcta’s core tech­nol­ogy and the cap­i­tal increase: «The per­for­mance require­ments for enzymes to be applied in indus­trial processes are in most cases very spe­cific and vary from nat­u­rally occur­ring vari­a­tions. Enzymes there­fore need to be adapted to indus­trial con­di­tions via enzyme engi­neer­ing, and c‑LEcta owns one of the most effi­cient tech­nol­ogy plat­forms in this area. For enzyme opti­miza­tion as well as for the devel­op­ment of arti­fi­cial enzyme activ­i­ties, we use patent-pro­tected strate­gies that are inspired by nature. The indus­trial appli­ca­tion of these tech­nolo­gies holds great mar­ket poten­tial. The finan­cial strength and valu­able inter­na­tional net­work that we have gained through this financ­ing round now offers us the oppor­tu­nity to develop the full poten­tial of our tech­nol­ogy and peo­ple. With Capri­corn Ven­ture Part­ners and bm|t, we get two active investors on board that can con­tribute sub­stan­tially to our inter­na­tional growth ambi­tions. Also, I am all the more pleased that our new CFO Thomas Pfaadt will sup­port us in this endeavor. Our goal is that in the future c‑LEcta´s tech­nol­ogy will be employed in many things we encounter in every­day life.”

About Capri­corn Ven­ture Partners:

Capri­corn Ven­ture Part­ners is an inde­pen­dent Euro­pean man­ager of ven­ture cap­i­tal and equity funds, invest­ing in inno­v­a­tive Euro­pean com­pa­nies with tech­nol­ogy as com­pet­i­tive advan­tage. It is based in Leu­ven, Bel­gium and licensed by the FSMA (the Finan­cial Ser­vices and Mar­kets Author­ity in Belgium).

About bm|t:

Erfurt-based, bm|t beteili­gungs­man­age­ment thürin­gen gmbh (bm|t) is the largest growth investor in the fed­eral state of Thuringia, Ger­many. bm‑t invests in inno­v­a­tive com­pa­nies with strong growth poten­tial across all sec­tors and phases of the cor­po­rate lifecycle.

About c‑LEcta

c‑LEcta is a fully inte­grated world-lead­ing biotech­nol­ogy com­pany with focus on enzyme engi­neer­ing and appli­ca­tion in reg­u­lated mar­kets like food and pharma. The com­pany is located in Leipzig, Ger­many, and has estab­lished itself as a lead­ing player in the real­iza­tion of high-value biotech prod­ucts, either in the form of in-house devel­op­ments or in close coöper­a­tion with indus­try. The com­pany cur­rently employs around 60 people.

c‑LEcta deliv­ers cost-effi­cient and sus­tain­able pro­duc­tion processes which open new mar­kets and allow for bet­ter pen­e­tra­tion of exist­ing mar­kets. The com­pany is char­ac­ter­ized by fast and effi­cient devel­op­ment of best-in-class biotech solu­tions and a rapid and suc­cess­ful mar­ket intro­duc­tion and com­mer­cial­iza­tion of the result­ing prod­ucts. This enables c‑LEcta to lever­age the unique poten­tial of its core tech­nolo­gies. c‑LEcta has a proven track record of more than 10 suc­cess­fully com­mer­cial­ized high-value indus­trial biotech products.