Kurawood, a company accessing technology to give softwood the consistency of hardwood, hopes to raise £4.5 million on AIM.

St. Helen’s Capital is bringing the company to market with a placing at £1 per share and an AIM value of £17 million. Roy Tilleard, the industrial chemist who previously led a buy-out at the Deb cleaning group, is chairman and chief executive of Kurawood, which has agreed to acquire PG Industries, a New Zealand concern with the rights to the ‘VECO’ process.

This process takes kiln-dried softwood and introduces the proprietary VECO formulation to change the natural cell structure of the wood, producing hard ‘Vecowood’. Kurawood intends to use the placing proceeds to increase PGI’s plant capacity sixfold to 30,000 metres over the coming 12 to 18 months.

The attraction of the VECO process, if it proves suitable, is that it replaces expensive hardwood (whose depletion around the world is causing serious environmental concern) with cheaper and faster-growing softwood. Peter McArthur, a founder of PG Industries, is chief technical officer of Kurawood, which also claims that Vecowood can undercut both hardwoods and present artificial substitutes by 50 per cent.

One to watch.

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