SME Instrument innovator Mantex starts floating on the stock exchange

Swedish SME Instrument innovator Mantex has been accepted for trading on the Nasdaq First North in Stockholm. The company is specialised in scanners for woodchips and biomass used for making cleaner and more efficient bio-energy.

Mantex's general public and institutional investors in Sweden were offered to subscribe for units of approximately €48 million. The subscription reached 95%. The share issue period provided the company with SEK46 million before issue costs and about 1 100 new shareholders.

Mantex received an SME Instrument grant in 2015 and successfully finished its project in February 2017. The grant was used to develop a new type of scanner that analyses biomass used for bio-energy, cutting on energy, chemicals and labour needed to treat the biomass.

Biomass is increasingly used on an industrial scale to produce bio-energy. Industries that use wood as a raw material for example, like the pulp and paper industry, often use the wood thrust aside to produce their own energy. However, for energy production, the properties and quality of the biomass make a huge difference on how the biomass will be processed, in particular the water content but also ash content and unwanted matter.

When the biomass is homogenous, like woodchips, the operation is straightforward, but things get complicated when the biomass comes from different sources. Currently it's very difficult to measure this content and industries that use biomass in big quantities need to compensate this uncertainty, which results in wasted in energy, chemicals, yields, quality and labour costs. The scanner would create economic advantages and improvements to the environment.

Zdroj: europa.eu