University of Cambridge spinout Reduse, which has developed technology to remove ink from paper, has secured £500,000 ($777,000) in additional seed funding from Cambridge Enterprise, the university’s tech transfer office.
University of Cambridge Enterprise Fund III, managed by Parkwalk Advisors, also invested in the round.
The capital will be used to support further development of Reduse’s technology, dubbed unprinting, which uses lasers to remove ink from laser-printed documents. The unprinting process can be repeated several times over without any damage to the paper.
The technology is based on research by David Leal, who developed it as part of his PhD research with the help of Julian Allwood at the engineering department’s Low Carbon Materials Processing Group.
In August 2014, the UK government’s innovation agency Technology Strategy Board awarded a £224,000 grant, while the spinout also won €20,000 ($26,400) at Climate-Kic UK’s Venture Competition that same month.
Reduse has not disclosed details about remaining funding, though it has revealed it has secured nearly £1m to date.
Mike Arnott, investment manager of Cambridge Enterprise, will join Reduse’s board of directors.
Stuart Evans, chairman and co-founder of Reduse, said: “Unprinting is a unique, intuitive solution to a global problem. With a lot of interest from a very diverse customer base, I believe we are on the right track to developing something that will change the way we think about using paper.”
