Companies: AXS   

An ambitious company with a technology that could help save rainforests has raised £18 million and launched on AIM. Accsys Technologies owns the rights for a process, acetylation, that can convert softwoods and non-durable hardwoods into a ‘new’ wood species it has dubbed Accoya.

Since this timber does not rot and is less prone to swelling and shrinking, it gives Accoya a 50-year guarantee longer even than concrete. Demand for sources of environmentally compatible, high-quality timber is being stimulated by the destruction of tropical rainforests and legal curbs on the use of wood treated with toxic chemicals.

Accsys’ executive chairman Willie Paterson-Brown argues this has created ‘an exceptional market opportunity’. He says demand for such wood across North America and Europe stands at around 40 million cubic metres, with an average selling price of £540 per cubic metre.

The company is currently ‘focusing its energies’ on the launch of its Netherlands-based Titan Wood subsidiary, which operates the acetylation business. The float proceeds will mostly help build a new facility by next summer.

Titan will licence its process out and will treat other customers’ wood at its premises. The first licensing revenues are expected in the second half of 2006.

Once Titan has been established, London-headquartered Accsys intends to branch out with other technologies, including a similar modification to MDF chipboard and an application in the styrene sphere.

The 69p-priced placing, where Collins Stewart was both adviser and broker, values Accsys at £90 million. Framlington subscribed to 4.9 per cent and Artemis, Rathbones and Deutsche Bank also picked shares.