Sagitta backs Medscreen MBO 

Sagitta Private Equity has backed the £7m MBO of Medscreen, Europe’s largest drug and alcohol testing business from US parent Pharmchem. Sagitta provided equity funding, with senior debt provided by Lloyds Bank. The acquisition will be refinanced post-completion, resulting in a funding structure comprising approximately 50 per cent equity and 50 per cent debt.

Sagitta Private Equity provides growth capital for small and mid-sized private companies in five target sectors: Business Services; Leisure; Healthcare Services; Media and Information Technology. The firm has approximately E400m under management and has collectively invested in over 30 companies throughout the UK and Western Europe. 

PolyTechnos leads £6.3m Plastic Logic funding

PolyTechnos Venture-Partners has lead a first round of private financing into Cambridge-based plastic electronics technology developer Plastic Logic. Founding investors Amadeus Capital Partners and The Dow Chemical Company also participated in the round.

As part of this financing round, Simon Waddington, partner of PolyTechnos Venture-Partners in Munich will join Plastic Logic’s board of directors. Plastic Logic CEO Stuart Evans said that the funding will be used to to position the company as the dominant provider of solutions for printing active electronic circuits.

Baring commits $2m to Falcon-Vision

The Baring Central European Fund is to provide $2m in financing to Budapest based Falcon-Vision. The investment will allow the firm, which produces industrial vision and image processing systems, to develop its international sales and after-sales activities in key European markets. The funding will also be used to add engineering and product design capacity and to recruit and train engineers with specialised skills in optics and vision based metrology.

This is BCEF's second investment in Hungary. The firm also invested in Allami Printing Company, a security printer specialists and developer of 'smart card' based identity cards.