Funding secured for biotech business
Start-up business Dyneval Ltd, which was founded by soft matter physicists, has secured funding to establish a quality control standard that will benefit the livestock production chain.
Funding
Dyneval is delighted to announce that it has secured total funding of over £1.8M to establish a new quality control standard for semen analysis that will benefit users across the livestock production chain.
As part of the funding round, Dyneval secured a £575K grant from InnovateUK under the Transforming Food Production Series A Investor Partnership. Securing lead investor support from Jim Dobson of Cottagequinn Enterprises Ltd within the Series A Partnership, and through a collaborative funding investment round led by Kelvin Capital and supported by Par Equity, Gabriel Investments and Scottish Enterprise, a further £1.293m of equity investment was raised.
Entrepreneurial effort
Dyneval was established by Dr Tiffany Wood and Dr Vincent Martinez in April 2020 to offer innovative technology for the precise measurement of semen quality in order to improve the profitability and sustainability of farming. Tiffany and Vincent have a background in the physics of complex fluids, which can be described as ‘liquids with bits in them’.
The challenge
Over the past 40 years, conception rates in cattle have fallen by 20% and this is costing the average UK dairy farmer over £37k each year. To assess semen quality on farm, vets rely on visual assessment using an optical microscope and data has shown that veterinary assessment can vary by as much as 40% so that vets err on the side of caution when advising farmers. The Dynescan, from Dyneval, is a portable instrument that provides reliable measurements of semen quality on the farm so that damaged or inferior quality semen can be discarded to ensure that only top quality semen is used for reproduction. This will save many cows from returning for insemination, improving their welfare while improving the operational efficiency of farms. Predictions indicate that if conception rates can be elevated by 27%, the carbon footprint of farming could be reduced by up to 20% [Garnsworthy, Animal Feed Science and Technology, 112, 2004]. Improving the sustainability of farming is a win-win-win: it helps farmers, improves animal welfare and is better for the environment.
Future plans
Next month, Dyneval will move address to the Roslin Innovation Centre based at the University of Edinburgh’s Easter Bush Campus and within a cluster of the highest concentration of animal related science expertise in Europe.