Friday 9 December 2011

Hopton strikes cool deal for Iceotope

Yorkshire entrepreneur Peter Hopton has led a deal to acquire the assets of technology company Iceotope from administrators.

The founder of Sheffield-based IT business Very PC, who has previously pitched for funding on hit TV show Dragons' Den, secured backing from an angel investor to complete the deal.
Hopton is the inventor of Iceotope, a patented 'eco friendly' server cooling system which was originally backed in 2009 with £300,000 from the South Yorkshire Investment Fund.
However the company, which claims its products reduce operating costs and carbon output for data centres, went into administration in October 2011.

After hearing about the failure, Hopton, who said he was not part of the management team at the time of the administration, led a consortium including the original engineering team in a deal to acquire the technology and intellectual property of Iceotope. The consortium is backed by a seven-figure investment sum.

"I made a few phone calls and spoke to some people about the product and where it was at and why I thought the company had failed," Hopton told Insider.

"Literally, I heard the company had gone into administration on the Monday, wrote a business plan on Tuesday, finished it on the Wednesday, sent it out on Thursday and then made a few phone calls.

"By Thursday night I had a commitment and by Friday I was putting in an offer to administrators with proof of funds."

Hopton worked with his unnamed angel backer, based in Guernsey, to form a new company. The backer is expected to "come out of the woodwork" in February/March when the product is launched.

Very PC will be subcontracted to do the manufacturing and help with the engineering.
Hopton has previously pitched his green IT technologies on BBC One's Dragons' Den. Despite being turned down when he pitched his company VeryPC, Hopton has now secured investment for Iceotope - originally a VeryPC spin off - and claims to have raised more cash than he was asking for in the den.

 

09 December 2011





No comments:

Post a Comment