Israeli company Dmatek Ltd, Herzliya is looking to raise $6m on London’s Alternative Investment Market to fund marketing and sales of its two major product lines, electronic monitoring and print verification. Since its formation in April 1990, the company has developed both the underlying technology; machine vision, radio frequency communications, telephony, software and embedded software, and the actual products to enable electronic monitoring and print verification. It is now looking for funding to bring these products to market worldwide. The first application for electronic monitoring, currently in use in the US and being tested in the UK and Europe is for monitoring house arrest criminals, to ensure they are in the right place at the right time according to the schedule prescribed in their sentencing. It uses Dmatek’s radio frequency transmitters and receivers linked to a personal computer system. The company is also working on several other applications of the technology, including medical home care monitoring. On the print verification side, the company has developed a system using an optical reader to scan a large print run and detect defects, displaying them on a screen for the operator, enabling defects to be corrected during the print run, thus cutting down on wastage. It has also developed an electronic proofing system for use over the Internet. Dmatek has set up two subsidiary companies to handle the two product lines, Elmo Tech Ltd for electronic monitoring and AVT Ltd for print verification. The company entered its first round of private funding in November 1993, raising $750,000, and then in 1994 raised $1.2m from institutional investors, including the UK’s GFM International Investors Ltd. Both sets of investors later took up further options. Dmatek claims to have spent some $7m on developing its product lines, and had losses last year of around รบ2.5m on turnover of $409,000. However the company says 1996 will be the start of its major sales drive, and it expects to break even in the next 12 to 18 months. It is currently valued at $21m; the issue will close at the end of next week. Sponsor for the flotation is Nabarro Wells & Co Ltd.
