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bm|t newsletter Q2 2019

Q2 2019 was an event­ful period for bm|t with two suc­cess­ful exits com­ing on con­sec­u­tive days in June. Exits are often per­ceived as the ulti­mate achieve­ment in the world of ven­ture cap­i­tal invest­ing, and they cer­tainly gar­ner much head­line atten­tion. How­ever, for bm|t, as a ven­ture investor that, in addi­tion to being per­for­mance-ori­ented, also has a strong moti­va­tion to see Thüringen’s econ­omy pros­per, we often view exits as merely the best next step in a company’s devel­op­ment. Indeed, these two June exits both occurred because it was the right time for the com­pa­nies to join forces with strong cor­po­rate part­ners in order to advance to the next level.

In this Newsletter 

EXIT, EXIT, Read All About It

HASEC, an EMS provider from Wutha-Farn­roda, became a bm|t investee part­ner in 2011, and the com­pany approx­i­mately dou­bled in size dur­ing the eight years of our part­ner­ship. The EMS indus­try has devel­oped rapidly over the past decade and fre­quently cus­tomers are look­ing for providers with over 100 Mio. EUR in sales. Through excel­lent exe­cu­tion and the devel­op­ment of new, cut­ting-edge capa­bil­i­ties HASEC, even as a smaller EMS provider, was able to grow strongly in this envi­ron­ment of ris­ing scale require­ments.
It became increas­ingly clear that the com­pany could take a huge leap for­ward and win cus­tomers of an entirely dif­fer­ent cat­e­gory and size if it were to join forces with a larger player in the space. Scan­fil Group, a Finnish pub­licly listed EMS provider with more than 500 Mio. EUR in sales, proved to be the per­fect part­ner for HASEC. Not only can HASEC ben­e­fit from Scanfil’s sheer size but it will receive strong sup­port, as Scan­fil plans for HASEC to be its core loca­tion for the entire DACH region. We know that HASEC will pros­per in many new and excit­ing ways.

read more ›

Lyna­tox, an Ilme­nau-based devel­oper of air and water fil­tra­tion tech­nolo­gies, with its proof-of-tech­nol­ogy in hand, was ready for a strate­gic part­ner that could com­mer­cial­ize its tech­nolo­gies. bm|t had invested in 2017 with a focus on fund­ing the tech­nol­ogy devel­op­ment, and this mile­stone was achieved.
Dier­sch & Schröder, a fam­ily-owned busi­ness based in Bre­men, was search­ing for unique tech­nolo­gies to enhance its Energy & Chem­istry busi­ness unit, which is focused on pro­tect­ing the essen­tial resources of the future (clean air and water). It is a great match, and D&S will inte­grate Lynatox’s tech­nol­ogy into its exist­ing busi­ness unit, which will cat­alyze Lynatox’s mar­ket entrance and growth.

read more ›

We are very pleased with these exits, espe­cially because in both cases the com­pa­nies will con­tinue to grow and pros­per in Thürin­gen and now with addi­tional resources sup­port­ing them. We wish HASEC and Lyna­tox all the best for their future devel­op­ment and are thank­ful for the part of the jour­ney that we shared with these great companies.

Your bm|t Team

Welcome to the Family

The Organ-on-a-Chip mar­ket is red hot, and Dynamic42 has devel­oped many unique tech­nolo­gies to improve the results of stud­ies involv­ing syn­thetic organ sys­tems to test drug tox­i­c­ity and potency by bet­ter mim­ic­k­ing real­is­tic human body con­di­tions. The sav­ings poten­tial for pharma and biotech com­pa­nies to test com­pounds in human-like con­di­tions ear­lier and with sig­nif­i­cantly lower costs is enor­mous. This invest­ment will allow for fur­ther tech­no­log­i­cal progress, the devel­op­ment of addi­tional organ mod­els, as well as the deep­en­ing of projects with large pharma com­pa­nies. For more details about Dynamic42 and this excit­ing new invest­ment please read the fol­low­ing press release:

press release ›

Follow-on Investments

PaketIn has devel­oped a cloud and app-based sys­tem for the man­age­ment of par­cel deliv­ery boxes, which can, for exam­ple, be placed out­side apart­ment build­ings or homes in order to greatly reduce fric­tion in the deliv­ery and receiv­ing of pack­ages. Deliv­ery ser­vices and apart­ment or home res­i­dents can sim­ply open or lock the box doors using the app, and push noti­fi­ca­tions and sta­tus updates are eas­ily seen on users’ smart­phones. The vari­ety of appli­ca­tions for PaketIn’s tech­nol­ogy plat­form is exten­sive, and this invest­ment will pri­mar­ily fund expan­sion into addi­tional markets.

Smartplatz’s mar­ket test in Erfurt demon­strated strong results and pro­vided the basis for the com­pany to develop a slightly mod­i­fied model and expand to Leipzig as its sec­ond focus city. With strong buy-in from retail­ers look­ing for an easy and cost-effec­tive way to com­bat the rise of online com­peti­tors, such as Ama­zon, Smart­platz is well posi­tioned to suc­ceed with its new model com­bin­ing the ease of dis­cov­ery of online shop­ping with the ben­e­fits of in-store expe­ri­ences. This invest­ment was made with a cor­po­rate co-investor and will sup­port the roll­out to mul­ti­ple cities over the com­ing year.

Investor Days Thüringen 2019

Investor Days Thürin­gen 2019 was again a big suc­cess with over 500 par­tic­i­pants and truly impres­sive pitches from more than 30 com­pa­nies across a wide vari­ety of sec­tors. Con­sid­er­ing the excel­lent and var­ied pitches as well as the great work­shops and lec­tures on the fol­low­ing day, there was some­thing for every­one. A huge THANK YOU to all the pre­sen­ters, atten­dees, and orga­niz­ers for their impor­tant con­tri­bu­tions to this fan­tas­tic event, which has become the pre­mier investor event in mid­dle Ger­many. We will be co-host­ing Investor Days Thürin­gen again next year and will be send­ing out the save-the-date noti­fi­ca­tions soon. We look for­ward to see­ing you again in Erfurt in 2020!

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