Liverpool city region supercar brake disc maker Surface Transforms raises £8.3m in new stock market share placing and intends to raise a further £2m. Tony McDonough reports

Merseyside manufacturer of carbon fibre reinforced ceramic brakes for high performance cars, Surface Transforms (ST), has raised £8.3m through a new share placing.

And ST, which operates from a factory in Knowsley and is listed on the Alternative Investment Market, said it intended to raise a further £2m. It will use the cash for working capital to continue to build production capacity to service its £390m order book.

Earlier this month ST revealed sales for the four months to October 31 were £3m, bringing year-to-date sales for the period to October 31, 2023 to £6.3m. In October it announced a new contract worth more than £100m.

Customers of the business include, or have included Porsche, Ferrari and Nissan, AMG, Aston Martin, Jaguar Land Rover and Lamborghini.

This month ST said that although it had overcome production issues that dogged its operation towards the end of 2022 it still faced challenges on the production line. These are hindering the business from creating sufficient capacity resilience.

In that trading update it said it was in talks to secure a £13m loan that would help to ramp up capacity.

On Tuesday it said: “While the company expects to fund phase 2 and phase 3 of its manufacturing expansion through a combination of external funding (expected to be from the proposed loan facility) and retained profits, it also requires working capital to fund the scale up.

“The fundraising also enables the company to remain on track to deliver on its recent contract successes.”

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Chairman David Bundred added: “We would like to thank both existing and new shareholders for their support of this placing, particularly those existing larger shareholders who, in difficult market conditions, have increased their percentage holding in the company. 

“Additionally, the open offer, accompanying the placing, has been scaled to provide existing non-institutional shareholders the opportunity, should they so wish, to support the company to both minimise their dilution and also support (it) in its next phase of growth.”