In July 2023, Maven realised its investment in the Blacktrace Group (Blacktrace) which develops and sells cutting edge scientific instrumentation and products. The strategic sale, to US life science tools corporate, Unchained Labs (Unchained), represented the second profitable sale from the Blacktrace Group following the acquisition of the Group’s Syrris unit by Japanese corporate Asahi Glassplant in early 2020.
Established in 2001, the Blacktrace employs a large team of world-class scientists and engineers at its state-of-the-art testing and manufacturing facility near Cambridge. Its customers include all the top 20 pharmaceutical companies, a wide range of major academic institutes, biotechs, start-ups, petrochemical companies, and food manufacturers. Maven Investor Partners invested in Blacktrace in 2016, and since then have supported the company’s world-class innovation, and continuous development and launch of new products and technologies.
The team’s ability to constantly innovate and create novel, high value life science products is remarkable and Unchained acquires a recognised name in applications as varied as microfluidics, vaccines, gene therapy and single-cell genomics analysis. We are proud of what the team have achieved during our time together and it’s been a pleasure to have been part of the Blacktrace journey.
David Milroy, Partner at Maven
