Frontier IP Group (AIM:FIPP), the intellectual property commercialisation specialist, has highlighted that its portfolio company Cambridge Raman Imaging has won a €400,000 European Innovation Council Transition grant to scale up its technology.
Frontier IP holds a 26.81% equity stake in CRI, whose technology analyses multiple Raman spectra simultaneously to build a near real-time chemical picture of a compound, faster than systems that process one spectrum at a time.
CRI is now targeting industrial quality control in the pharmaceutical sector as an initial strategic focus, alongside its existing medical and biological research work. The company is in discussions with two leading pharmaceutical groups to begin pilot testing of a machine that checks tablets, pills and powders for correct active ingredient levels during mass production.
The global pharmaceutical inspection equipment market is valued at $5 billion and forecast to reach $13 billion by 2033, Frontier noted.
CRI has also signed a distribution agreement with Hooke Instruments, a China-based manufacturer with more than 100 customers globally, to sell its technology into the Chinese medical and scientific research microscope market.
"While we are initially targeting the industrial quality control markets, we are still very much at work in developing our technology for the medical and other markets", said Francesco Crisafi, CRI's chief executive and chief technology officer.
Regulatory barriers are lower in industrial quality control than in medical markets, Frontier IP noted, which it means it could give CRI a faster route to scale.
News Intelligence what this means for the company
Cambridge Raman Imaging, in which Frontier IP holds a 26.81% stake, has secured €400,000 in non-dilutive EU funding and is pivoting toward pharmaceutical quality control—a market valued at $5 billion today but forecast to reach $13 billion by 2033. The company is already in pilot discussions with two major pharma groups and has signed a distribution deal with a China-based microscope manufacturer, giving it a faster regulatory path to revenue than its original medical research focus.
The grant de-risks CRI's scaling without diluting Frontier IP's stake, and the pivot to pharma quality control—where regulatory barriers are lower than medical markets—shortens the path to commercial traction.
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