NanoCoat Ltd

What we do

NanoCoat develops and applies functional surface coatings for industrial equipment: anti-fouling coatings for heat exchangers, low-friction coatings for pumps and valves in abrasive service, and hydrophobic treatments for outdoor electrical assets. The coatings are deposited by a plasma-assisted process at low temperature, which means they can be applied to finished components — including polymers and heat-treated steels — without affecting the substrate's mechanical properties or dimensional tolerances.

Market and customers

Our customers are industrial equipment operators and the OEMs who supply them, across food and drink processing, water treatment, oil and gas, and renewables. The commercial case is maintenance interval extension: a heat exchanger that needs cleaning every six weeks instead of every two weeks changes a plant's whole maintenance economics, and that argument is made in a language plant managers already speak. We operate a coating service from our own facility and licence the process to OEMs who prefer to apply it in their own production line.

Traction

Revenue in the last financial year was £740k, roughly three quarters from the coating service and the balance from two licence agreements. A distillery customer has reported a threefold extension of cleaning intervals on coated heat exchanger plates over an eighteen-month trial, and has since coated a second production line. Repeat business accounts for 68% of service revenue, which is the metric we watch most closely at this stage.

Team and investors

The company was founded by two researchers from Glasgow Caledonian University's surface engineering group and now employs 12 people, including a technical sales lead recruited from an industrial coatings business. The coating facility has capacity for roughly three times current throughput before further capital is required. Funding to date comprises angel investment and Scottish Enterprise grant support.

Current raise

A £1M seed round is open, to fund a second deposition chamber, qualification of the food-contact coating to the standards our food and drink pipeline requires, and the technical sales capacity to convert an order book that currently exceeds our ability to service it.