Double award win for OptiBiotix
York-based OptiBiotix Health plc has won a major industry award for its weight loss additive SlimBiome.
The life sciences company triumphed in the ‘Best Functional Ingredient for Health and Wellbeing’ category at the Food Matters Live awards held in London.
On the same day, OptiBiotix was included in the first ‘York Top 100 Businesses’ and presented with a ‘One to Watch’ award by the organisations behind the listing, Make it York, York St John University and the York Press.
Finance Yorkshire invested more than £500,000 from its seedcorn fund to support OptiBiotix in the early stage development of products to tackle obesity, high cholesterol and diabetes.
Its patented SlimBiome additive was formulated by scientists at Sheffield Hallam University and is available in GoFigure products.
OptiBiotix founder and CEO Stephen O’Hara said: “These awards are a great achievement for our team. The Food Matters award recognises that our SlimBiome product is innovative and demonstrates a new approach to weight loss management. It allows you to control your calorie intake and stops you from feeling hungry.
“The One to Watch award is great recognition from colleagues and peers in York where the business started. When we formed the company we worked with Finance Yorkshire who invested in what was just an idea at the time. We have grown from a concept to become a listed company valued at £55-60 million in a very short period of time.
“We have completed most of the scientific development and are commercialising a large number of products. As the promise of the microbiome materialises into a wider range of products and we extend into overseas territories the scale of the opportunity enlarges allowing us to fully exploit the revenue generating potential of our products.
“Our aim is to grow to a £200m market cap company and take the health benefits of the microbiome to consumers around the world.”
Alex McWhirter, chief executive of Finance Yorkshire, said: “We first invested in OptiBiotix in 2012. It was a modest investment but what impressed us was the company’s research and development plans, commercial ambitions and management team.
“OptiBiotix listed on AIM in 2014 and since then has enjoyed considerable growth. It is now commercialising its products which hopefully will make it one of the larger companies to look out for in future York Top 100 reports. OptiBiotix really is one to watch.”
Note: this news article is from Finance Yorkshire’s previous fund. Read more about Finance Yorkshire