AN innovative Scottish company which has attracted around £18m of private equity investment has gone into administration.
Aberdeen based Gas2 is understood to have cut all its staff except the managing director in the spring of this year. It had employed more than 20 at its peak.
The business has spent around a decade developing technology to convert gas into liquids which was said to have potential for marginalised and mothballed gas fields.
There was also expected to be applications for distributing gas into rural and remote areas but the firm, founded in 2005 by Willie Reid and Mike Fleming, has never been able to commercialise the technology.
Its biggest funding round was the £10m secured in 2008 from Lime Rock Partners with a further £5.5m won in 2012 and £2m in 2013.
Robert Gordon University, US private equity firm Silverwood partners and a host of private investors, including Viscount Gough, are also listed as shareholder on Gas2’s most recent annual return.
The Scottish Investment Bank, part of Scottish Enterprise, has also been a backer of the business.
Iain Fraser and Tom MacLennan, partners with FRP Advisory and joint administrators, are looking to sell the intellectual property and assets of the business.
Mr Fraser said: “Gas2 was focused on perfecting a new technology that has the potential to cause a seismic shift in the [gas to liquid] market.
“That significant market potential still exists, but unfortunately the company could not fund the next phase of [research and development], and there was no alternative other than to place the business in administration.”
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