Screen Technology Calls In Administrators
Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief
Three years ago these folks in Cambridge, England had a red hot product on their hands (ITrans) but corporate ineptitude and wanton waste of investors’ money surely did for them.
Even a nice OEM deal with a reputable far east OEM such as LiteMax wasn’t enough to save them – though perhaps someone like a LiteMax may want to step in and buy any of the IP that may still be in the business.
Chris Williams and Andrew McTear of McTear Williams and Wood were appointed joint administrators of Screen Technology Limited on 19 May 2009 and of Screen Technology Group plc on 20 May, in both cases by the directors filing a notice of appointment in Court.
The Joint administrators’ are working to find a buyer for the business and assets and anyone interested should contact Chris McKay on +44 1223 903021.
As is often the case it is the small investor who gets screwed – in the event that a (new) Nominated Adviser is not appointed on or before 7.00 am on 22 June 2009 then in accordance with Rule 1 of the AIM Rules for Companies, the admission of the Company’s ordinary shares to trading on AIM will be cancelled.
As we said about Screen Technology in our post ‘HOT or NOT – The Companies We Told You To Watch In 2008‘ back in December 2008…
We thought there was a chance that this Cambridgeshire based company could be turned around. Initially burning through almost UK PDS 10 million of investors money and with nothing at the end to show for it of note – they entered voluntary administration to seek protection from their creditors, raised a little bit of money from some Russians to get out of that but have struggled again since. What was once an exciting piece of technology now looks expensive for what it as well as being old and tired.
They think it’s all over – it is now!!
May 21st, 2009 at 14:53 @662
Shame we first looked at it maybe 7 years ago when it was still relevant, but it took another 5 years to finish off by which point it was far less relevant and hugely expensive. They had a big money pit to fill up so pitched the price at a rate that was ridiculous.
May 22nd, 2009 at 04:03 @211
We Litemax started working with STL to redesign the whole iTran display module since 2008. The ideas are cost down, make the module slimmer, less power consumption, and easy to install. During the Computex 2009, we will launch the new Litile34 which can achieve that goal. We wish Litile34 can be another choice for large area display, Slim, Scalable, Seamless, and Sunlight readable! Feel free to check our website at http://www.litemax.com.
May 22nd, 2009 at 09:46 @448
Most everyone who saw the 200” diagonal (8.5m2) modular Itrans display in Cambridge in Summer 2007 loved it, many were bowled over. Nothing else could produce this quality of image at this scale. However there is a lot to the technology and a naturally conservative industry was reluctant to adopt an unproven technology with some obvious limitations. For the last three years the Company has been resource strapped and fighting to balance development, productionisation and marketing budgets, not easy for a small company with a breakthrough product – all the time competing for customers with some very major companies.
Since 2007 the Company has found some top drawer manufacturing partners in the Far East and driven cost down by 60%, while being in a genuine position to scale up production significantly. Litemax have done a great job putting together a low power and slimline module – and perhaps other OEM’s will follow. The challenge, as ever, is whether significant early adopter customers will come along. If you ask me to guess I think they will, this technology still does something in the mid scale display that nothing else can compete with – and there are plenty of potential applications in the “large area indoor” field.
Alternatively an industry major could, for relatively little incremental investment, iron out the product niggles and give hard hitting sales backing to the product, surely the opportunity is there to compete with LED at the super high resolution scale.
Over ten years some £20M has been invested in the company; this has yielded significant technology, patents and valuable manufacturing machinery; someone is going to acquire this for a bargain price. Sadly all of the investors in Screen Technology (not just the small investor) will have lost out. The winner in these circumstances is the company that acquires the bargain and knows how to exploit it. I hope we all have the option of this technology for the future, whoever acquires it, and it doesn’t just get buried. It can compete fantastically with LED at the super high resolution / smaller screen size market. It will be interesting to see what develops – very interesting; I don’t think we’ve seen the last of Itrans.
May 26th, 2009 at 12:15 @552
OK, enough of the squabbling… We have a world beating product, we have a sales pipeline and we have a small, modestly paid passionate team who are ready to get this thing over the line (who have not been paid for 2 months btw). Who out there has an equally modest amount of cash to prove that the the West can, on this occassion, do the sensible thing ? Can we all think outside box for once ? Can we acknowledge the long term mentality of our Asian counterparts/partners ? Yes there was £20 Million which could have been spent more wisely. Yes there were plenty of hangers on. That’s History…thanks DOOH and your members for reminding us though. LCD and LED was 10 years in the pipeline. This is ITrans…1.7mm, seamless, scalable and bright. I can’t think of a competitor out there that competes on all 4 fronts and with a new Asian price tag (dare I say) the no-brainer choice for DOOH (near/far viewing). The production capacity is available and Orion are shaking in their boots now that STL, Litemax and SHL are are on the block. Yes DOOH, 10 years of UK technical innovation is about to deliver thanks (sadly for the reasons stated above) to disappointed investors combined with our recent Asian alliance. We hope to prove DOOH wrong on this one. I have one question for all previous investors out there…’Is this lean, mean cash generating machine the same Company now as it was when you first came across us ?’ I can assure you the answer is a resounding ‘NO’. We’re here for the taking…any interested parties should contact administrators McTear Williams and Wood tel. +44 (0) 1603 877540. Or we could just meet down the Job Club with all the recently paid off Bankers out there. Let’s hope not! I’m not a betting man but let’s wait and see who has the foresight to check us out now.