AURORA has announced 2 million euros of successful fundraising reserved for its current shareholders to fund its new industrial sterilisation projects

AURORA is a Normandy MedTech business specialising in sterilisation. It was created in 2019. It originated with a partnership begun in October 2018 between AURORA on the one hand, and the University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne (URCA) and the Charleville-Mézières Regional Centre for Innovation and Technology Transfer on the other. That partnership led to patents for a sterilisation technique based on low-temperature plasma using gases from the air. The company initially raised 3 million euros of capital in December 2021. In February 2022, AURORA won the “Emergent Infectious Diseases” (AMI-MIE) call for expressions of interest under the France 2030 plan, which awarded it 3 million euros of non-dilutive funding.

So AURORA owns the first cold-plasma sterilisation technology for medical systems, using only gas from the air and no chemicals.

Innovation developed by AURORA

The sterilisation system developed by AURORA is truly innovative, since it:

completely protects patients exposed to potential contamination from endoscopes that were not formerly sterilisable;
opens up the possibility of marketing innovative medical systems that formerly had no suitable sterilisation process;
provides a low-energy sterilising agent that is non-toxic for human health and the environment.

AURORA’s target markets

Sterilisation in health centres

AURORA’s main task is to supply equipment, consumables and expertise for health centres, to enable the sterilisation of reusable medical systems.

In November 2022, AURORA developed the 3rd version of its preindustrial sterilisation prototype adapted to the needs of the market, with a 140 L tank. The assembly of the first 3 production version AQSANIITs (“Northern Lights” in Inuit) is in progress. The company is continuing to prepare its post-CE certification marketing for 2024.

A new market identified: industrial sterilisation

The AURORA team has discovered a second, very promising market for its cold-sterilisation technology: manufacturers of medical systems for whom sterilisation is an essential prerequisite before a product can be launched.

Indeed, for a number of reasons, the industrial sterilisation market will be restructured over the coming years due to:

the toxicity of ethylene oxide (EtO), which is leading governments and industries to seek short and medium-term alternatives (EtO currently represents 50% of the low-temperature sterilisation market);
the carbon footprint of EtO sterilisation, resulting from energy consumption and related transport;
difficulties in increasing sterilisation capacity with current technology, which delay the production of medical systems and raises their cost price.

So AURORA technology is an alternative to existing low-temperature industrial-sterilisation techniques (gamma rays, EtO). Developing a machine that can industrially sterilise medical material on manufacturers’ premises is a great opportunity for the company.

“In our eyes, this complementary project is an excellent opening for AURORA. It will allow us to market the technology in a relevant, dynamic marketplace and reduce the risks of “go-to-market” in the hospital sector while increasing the outlet prospects for our investors,” remarked co-founder and chair Thomas Parias.

“Not a week goes by without a medical-material manufacturer asking us to help replace ethylene oxide. Industrial sterilisation is a segment that reduces our investment risk by contributing 25% to our forecast EBITDA in the 3rd year after launch,” stated Jan Laarman, co-founder and General Manager of AURORA.

AURORA’s fundraising

AURORA is pleased to announce the successful raising of 2 million euros of capital from its historical shareholders to fund the development of a new market: industrial sterilisation.

The first phase of development is forecast to last 10 months and will enable work to modify the prototypes and allow the penetration of plasma within the packaging.
The second phase, whose anticipated duration is 14 months, will involve the construction of a plasma reactor able to process a complete range of medical systems (currently only a 140 L tank has been used to demonstrate the concept) and finalise the different operational parameters.

“We have again decided to rely on AURORA’s founders’ vitality and relevant vision of the market. In our view, this new segment has great potential for the development of a European leader in sterilisation technology,” declares Bruno Guicheux, Associate Investment Manager at GO CAPITAL, AURORA’s main investor.