ANB Sensors ‘hatches’ global expansion after seed round

A Cambridge sensor technology business is talking to big players globally about potential partnerships and scaling internationally after securing unspecified seed funding.

ANB Sensors develops smart, affordable, self-calibrating pH sensing technologies. The seed financing is a co-investment by Hatch Blue, an early-stage aquaculture venture capital firm and angel investors – experienced industry professionals represented by Namier Capital Partners.

There are a multitude of new applications and markets that will benefit from small, affordable, calibration-free, robust pH sensors – from oceanographic monitoring using autonomous underwater vehicles to large scale water networks and industrial plants.

Besides being cheaper to operate, the drop-and-forget sensors will have an important part in rapidly expanding markets of networked and online water monitoring.

pH is the number one chemical measurement used today and is required across a vast amount of industries. Despite its importance, pH sensing technology has changed very little in decades, and in many emergent fields they are simply not up to the task; the expensive and fragile glass electrodes need to be manually calibrated on a regular basis, and do not operate in low buffer media.

This frequent manual calibration to maintain accuracy has a huge impact on maintenance costs, quantity that can deployed, whilst also having a significant environmental impact.

ANB Sensors is addressing this issue and will provide a solution to meet the demands required for a truly networkable solution. The technology is based on a voltammetric electrochemical technique to verify the performance of the reference electrode and calibrate it, in-situ, when drift occurs.

It can either be retrofitted into the reference chamber of existing glass electrodes or combined with ANB Sensors patented solid-state pH sensor to form an all solid-state, robust, calibration free solution.

Through securing more than £1.3 million of grant funding to date and being the only UK company to be awarded an H2020 EU grant in their round, the business has filed nine patents with more in the pipeline.

Participation in Hatch Blue’s 2020 accelerator program will further expedite the company’s commercialisation.

CEO and co-founder Nathan Lawrence said: “This investment will help deliver much needed new pH sensor technology to a multitude of sectors. Having completed our R & D phase, we are now ready to commercialise and the advice and expertise from our new investors will be key to achieving this.”

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