Seed financ­ingled by bm‑t beteili­gungs­man­age­ment thürin­gen gmbh is paving the way to mar­ket matu­rity for the online-capa­ble Spher­oScan® sensor.

Flu­IDect GmbH has suc­cess­fully com­pleted its seed financ­ing round in the mil­lions. bm‑t beteili­gungs­man­age­ment thürin­gen gmbh (bm|t), b.value AG from Dort­mund and Sparkasse Jena-Saale-Hol­z­land are invest­ing in the start-up from Jena to develop the Spher­oScan sen­sor for online mon­i­tor­ing of bio­log­i­cal processes in indus­try and agriculture.

The fully auto­matic Spher­oScan® biosen­sor is used for online mon­i­tor­ing of liq­uid prod­ucts and process media. It can be inte­grated into many tech­ni­cal sys­tems and iden­ti­fies dan­ger­ous germs con­tin­u­ously and at a high cycle rate. This is made pos­si­ble by a novel sen­sor prin­ci­ple that uses func­tion­al­ized micropar­ti­cles as freely mov­able probes in an ana­lyt­i­cal sam­ple. FluIDect’s patented pho­tonic detec­tion method, which is based on the WGM effect (Whis­per­ing Gallery Modes), allows the par­ti­cles to be read out directly. This achieves a high sen­si­tiv­ity with a very short time-to-result.

For the first time, plant oper­a­tors thus receive directly usable micro­bi­o­log­i­cal data for con­tin­u­ous mon­i­tor­ing and long-term analy­sis of prod­uct qual­ity and process sta­bil­ity. This enables an unsur­passed level of safety and effi­ciency in the pro­duc­tion of food and active ingre­di­ents, the pro­vi­sion of clean water or the defense against infec­tious dis­eases. FluIDect’s in-process bio­analy­sis is there­fore an impor­tant com­po­nent for sus­tain­able man­age­ment for the ben­e­fit of humans, ani­mals and the environment.

“Flu­IDect is a real deep tech start-up with a promis­ing plat­form tech­nol­ogy. Once the inno­v­a­tive detec­tion prin­ci­ple for the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of liq­uids has been estab­lished, there are count­less poten­tial appli­ca­tions with which the com­pany can grow,” empha­sizes Katja Butz­mann, Senior Invest­ment Man­ager at bm‑t. Peter Kallien, CEO of b.value AG, adds: “Flu­IDect has a label-free detec­tion method for microor­gan­isms and can there­fore elim­i­nate the time-con­sum­ing and labor-inten­sive sam­ple prepa­ra­tion that such tests nor­mally require. This opens up com­pletely new appli­ca­tion pos­si­bil­i­ties for this type of analy­sis, which is highly excit­ing for us as a deep tech investor.”

About FluIDect

Flu­IDect devel­ops state-of-the-art micro­bial process mea­sure­ment tech­nol­ogy for indus­try, agri­cul­ture and water sup­pli­ers. The aim is to increase the safety, effi­ciency and cost-effec­tive­ness of bio­log­i­cal processes along the value chain. Flu­IDect thus makes an impor­tant con­tri­bu­tion to sus­tain­abil­ity from the pro­ducer to the consumer.

Fur­ther infor­ma­tion can be found at www.fluidect.com

About the bm|t

bm|t, based in Erfurt, is the lead­ing address for cor­po­rate invest­ments in Thuringia. bm|t cur­rently man­ages eleven funds with a total vol­ume of around EUR 415 mil­lion, which invest in inno­v­a­tive com­pa­nies in almost all sec­tors and in all phases of cor­po­rate devel­op­ment — both in the start-up and growth phases or in com­pany suc­ces­sion situations.

Fur­ther infor­ma­tion about bm|t is avail­able at www.bm‑t.de

About b.value AG

b.value invests in DeepTech start-ups that com­bine excep­tional founders and ground­break­ing tech­nolo­gies and offer solu­tions for a sus­tain­able world of tomor­row. The in-depth tech­nol­ogy exper­tise and many years of oper­a­tional expe­ri­ence in build­ing and man­ag­ing biotech and high-tech com­pa­nies enable b.value to iden­tify the most promis­ing deep tech start-ups and to sup­port them finan­cially and strate­gi­cally in order to real­ize their full poten­tial. Its unique struc­ture and expe­ri­ence allow b.value to act both flex­i­bly and for the long term. Fur­ther infor­ma­tion about b.value is avail­able at www.bvalue.de

About Sparkasse Jena-Saale-Holzland

For 195 years, the Sparkasse has been the first point of con­tact for finan­cial trans­ac­tions as a part­ner and pro­moter of regional com­pa­nies and char­i­ta­ble com­mit­ments. It is actively com­mit­ted to the region and cul­ti­vates the sav­ings bank concept.

Another focus of its regional com­mit­ment as the prin­ci­pal bank for its cor­po­rate cus­tomers is the devel­op­ment of the econ­omy, the skilled trades and the asso­ci­ated infrastructure.

Invest­ments such as those in Flu­IDect GmbH are an impor­tant con­tri­bu­tion to pro­mot­ing busi­ness and tech­nol­ogy in the region. This is why Sparkasse Jena-Saale-Hol­z­land will con­tinue to par­tic­i­pate in fur­ther cor­po­rate financ­ing in the future, thereby lay­ing the foun­da­tions for new jobs. Fur­ther infor­ma­tion about Sparkasse Jena-Saale-Hol­z­land is avail­able at www.s‑jena.de