RUSNANO Board of Directors approved withdrawal from investment project

The Board of Directors approved the first RUSNANO withdrawal from previously invested company - Center for Advanced Technologies, JSC, which implements a project to expand production of scanning probe microscopes and microbalance. The buyer of 27.6% stakes of the project company will be NPP CLT, LLC. Expected RUSNANO return on investment will be 29.5%, the company reports.

RUSNANO participation in the high-tech company’s project, founded by MSU professor Igor Yaminsky, allowed the company to reach a new business level and expand the range of scanning probe microscopes and software for them. The volume of RUSNANO investment in the project was 50 M RUR of the originally planned 140 M RUR. Owing to allocated investment, the company launched its working area in December 2011, which will allow to double the flow of output in 2012 and to reach revenue of 70 M RUR.

The deal meets two essential criteria of successful RUSNANO withdrawal from existing investment projects: yield no less than planned and the ability of project to develop independently.

The main products of the Centre for Advanced Technologies are series of scanning probe microscopes FemtoScan - high-precision instruments that use the principle of the mechanical motion of the probe (cantilever) to study the surface of a sample with an accuracy of one nanometer. The instrument can be used in chemistry, physics, biology and medicine, as well as for surfaces quality control in nanotechnology. The company also produces software for probe microscopes control and images processing FemtoScan On-line and the microbalance that allow discovering the presence of particles of different substances at the level of individual atoms.