A North East company that designs and makes bulletproof shields to protect school children has smashed its crowdfunding target by more than £500,000.
Sedgefield’s Graphene Composites has developed the GC Shield to protect children in American from school shootings.
The product has been designed to be able to be quickly deployed and clipped together with other GC Shields so that it can protect groups of children at the same time. They can also be placed in backpacks to protect individual children.
A month ago Graphene Composites took to crowdfunding site Crowdcube in the hope of raising £100,000 in investment “in case there is a period of turmoil following the election”.
The company’s crowdfunding campaign came to an end on Wednesday. In total the company raised £614,860, more than six times what it was hoping to raise.
As Graphene Composites has raised so much more than it expected, the company has said it will now use the funds to further develop some of its products.
Sandy Chen, CEO of Graphene Composites said: “With 5.5x overfunding, we can expand and accelerate the development and commercialisation of the applications for GC’s graphene/aerogel composite and other nano-material technologies. Or in other words, this is a huge boost.”
Crowdcube works differently to many other crowdfunding sites and has been set up to allow businesses to raise cash in exchange for equity. In its latest campaign Graphene Composites sold 2.82% of its business for £614,860.
A total of 1,310 investors backed the firm, with the average investment being £469. The largest investment was £24,000.
The company has taken part in crowdfunding campaigns in the past, with its last raising more than £500,000 for the business. However, this is the firm’s biggest UK crowdfunding campaign to date.
Graphene Composites is beginning to make an entrance in the US and recently struck a $1.2m deal to supply its equipment to a school in America. Its sales pipeline includes more than a dozen schools and places of worship.
