Business Highlights from Saietta Group

Wicher Kist appointed full-time Saietta CEO

You may be aware that Wicher joined us late last year to lead the new Applications Engineering team. He quickly made a major positive difference and both the Senior Management Team and the Saietta Board asked him to step up to full-time CEO. Wicher is a highly experienced engineer with a specialism in powertrains and is a driven, commercially-astute professional which makes him an ideal CEO. You can read more at http://www.saiettagroup.com/team/
 
Saietta & Greaves Cotton MoU

We are pleased to confirm confidentially that Saietta Group (SG) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Greaves Cotton (GC) which manufactures c.400,000 diesel engines in India per annum largely for light weight vehicles. The market is rapidly transitioning to electric propulsion in India and GC are looking for an electric motor-controller technical partner. Read more http://www.greavescotton.com/about-us

The MoU is for a 3 month Board-level exploration of ways we could work together:

1. SG’s DC motors/controllers in GC’s new electric rickshaw concept
2. SG’s DC motors/controllers across GC’s established 5 core sectors
3. Definition of GC’s technical and commercial requirements across all 5 core sectors for the next generation of SG’s brushless motors/controllers
4. Possible manufacturing co-operation for SG’s next generation of brushless motors
5. Equity investment by GC into SG

Saietta is meeting with Greaves Cotton for a second time at their global HQ in Mumbai week commencing 19th March to begin the 3 month exploration.
 
Saietta has launched a DC controller

The controller has been designed and manufactured in-house specifically for our existing DC motors. For the first time Saietta can offer clients a highly efficient motor-controller combination. We’ve completed extensive testing of our motor-controller versus an established Chinese motor-controller on the same ‘real-world’ duty cycle and our mated system is 23% more efficient and delivers 30% faster 0-40 km/h acceleration.

A rickshaw in Indian cities needs a range of c.100km on a single charge. Our system would require 23% less lithium ion batteries than the Chinese motor-controller which equates to a saving of $372 (or £267) at the current market price of $209 (£150) per kWh (source: Bloomberg New Energy Finance). This is significant given a new petrol rickshaw costs c.£1,500 in total.
 
Angel Investment is closing

We’ve secured 95.4% of the £5.85m Angel round, leaving just £269K available, all of which is eligible for EIS on a ‘3 for 2’ deal whereby 3 shares will be allocated for every 2 bought at the standard share price of £1.053/share which equates to £0.702/share, representing a 33% incentive. Please let us know as soon as possible if you would like to take up some or all of the remaining £269K.

For information, we are only planning 2 further investment rounds (totalling £12m - £20m) mainly from institutions and we’ve already kicked off positive discussions with a number of potential investors.