LONDON (Alliance News) - Inspirit Energy Holdings PLC Thursday said it has raised GBP1 million gross proceeds in a share placing, money it will use to fund the next phase of bringing its micro combined heat and power boiler to the market.
Inspirit Energy is developing a heating boiler that simultaneously generates enough electricity to power the average home.
"This funding will more than adequately fund the company through the next key critical stages of development, production and trial installations of the company's mCHP appliance as a precursor to moving to commercial production," it said in a statement.
In a statement, the company said it had issued 71.4 million shares at 1.4 pence each in its placing. Chief Executive John Gunn invested GBP50,000 by subscribing for nearly 3.6 million shares, which means he will now have an interest in 353.8 million shares, or a 54% stake in the company.
"The first mCHP appliances are expected to go into commercial field trials in the UK by the end of October 2014. These trials are designed to validate Inspirit's mCHP technology with a number of European Utilities and important small- to medium-sized enterprise customers who have signed up to be part of this important validation and EU certification process," it said in its statement.
The company had last month announced a trial deal with a "major" European utility. It said Thursday that initial testing had been successful and the utility had now agreed to talk about the potential to co-operate in field trials of the appliance within its network.
Inspirit hasn't named the utility, but said it is one the major energy utilities in Europe with an extensive customer base of gas consumers in both the industrial and domestic sectors. It is also one of the largest installers of boilers and energy efficiency products in its market place, Inspirit added.
"The company has been mindful of unnecessary shareholder dilution since its re-admission in July of last year, but the board thought it prudent at this critical stage of the company's product development to raise the necessary funding to ensure we meet the time lines set for deploying our unique mCHP appliances into the commercial arena by the end of October this year," CEO Gunn said.
Inspirit shares were down 3.9% at 1.49 pence Thursday morning.
By Steve McGrath; stevemcgrath@alliancenews.com; @stevemcgrath1
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Inspirit Energy (INSP)