ANGEL Biotechnology Holdings appointed administrators last night and suspended trading in its shares.
The AIM-listed company, which provides contract manufacturing for the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries, had warned last month it would run out of cash by the end of March unless two partnership deals could be struck.
One of those involved a consortium of international organisations, which had been interested in establishing a strategic relationship with Angel's contract manufacturing business.
But those discussions were "terminated" causing the company – based at the Pentlands Science Park in Midlothian and a large facility at Cramlington, Northumberland – to request the suspension of its shares.
A proposed joint venture with Russian company MMH, which has been mooted since autumn 2011, is also now likely to be abandoned.
The administration also affects subsidiary Angel Biomedical, which was formed to run a collagen manufacturing site in Glasgow.
Angel chairman Nicholas Smith expressed "disappointment and sadness" at what had happened. KPMG was appointed as administrator to the company and is assessing the financial situation while looking for a buyer.
All 22 Angel staff are being retained.
Blair Nimmo, head of restructuring for KPMG in Scotland, said: "Angel Biotechnology and Angel Biomedical have worldwide reputations for the quality of their production facilities, understanding of global regulatory regimes, and being at the cutting edge of pharmaceutical and biotechnological manufacturing.
"We are hopeful that the companies, and their employees, will have a positive future given their unrivalled credentials and quality of service."
Angel reported a £1.3 million loss in the 12 months to March 31, 2012, but had £580,255 of cash at that point.
In unaudited interim results for the six months to September 30, 2012 the loss was £2.8m, although more than £2m was due to the costs associated with setting up the MMH joint venture.
At that point cash and cash equivalents were at £496,000.
Angel was floated in 2005 with shares trading at 1.5p. Prior to suspension they were at 0.05p.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article