Supercar brake disc maker Surface Transforms raises £18m from shareholders to complete expansion of its Liverpool city region factory. Tony McDonough reports

Merseyside supercar brake disc maker Surface Transforms (ST) said on Wednesday it had raised £2m from its shareholders via an open offer.

This follows a share placing and takes the total amount raised by the Knowsley-based business to £18m. It is using the cash to complete its first production facility and commit to a second one.

ST, which is listed on the stock exchange’s Alternative Investment Market (AIM), said in September that it now had an order book totalling more than £200m. Following several years of building up its reputation and gradually growing its customer base, the company said it was now close to “sustained profitability”.

The firm makes carbon ceramic brake discs for a number of high performance cars. Customers have included Porsche, Ferrari and Nissan. It is currently supplying brake discs for the Aston Martin Valkyrie which retails at £3m.

Its latest open offer to shareholders was announced on September 29. Applications were received for 4,963,739 open offer shares, representing a take-up of 66.2% of the 7,500,000 available open offer shares, raising £2m.

ST chairman David Bundred said: “We want to take this opportunity to thank our smaller shareholders for their support of this open offer, bringing total funds raised, including the placing, to £18m.

“This fundraising enables us to complete factory one and commit to the second factory. We continue to expect that this confidence in our future growth will be reflected by a significant contract award before the year end.”

Also in September it announced it had secured a £13m contract to supply its carbon ceramic brake disc to be fitted to an electric vehicle. The identity of the auto manufacturer was not revealed.

In the same month it published its interim results for the six months ended June 30, 2022. They revealed a 137% surge in revenues to £2.9m and a pre-tax loss of £2.5m. It now expects to be profitable for the full year to December 31, 2022.

In the latest set of results it stated the order book stood at £190m. But this doesn’t include the most recent deal which takes the total to £203m. Its prospective contract pipeline (counting expected repeat orders with existing customers) stands at £400m.