Evocutis set to sell assets after decision to switch firm’s focus

The Wetherby-based company held talks with around 100 companies across the UK, Europe and US as part of its formal sales process, but this was terminated last October.

As a result, the decision has been taken to change the focus of the company to managing its intellectual property.

Discussions are continuing over the potential sale or licence of the group’s assets.

Interim CEO Dr Gwyn Humphreys said: “The past year has been a difficult one for Evocutis. Whilst the group has achieved sales revenues of £395,000 and a reduced overall loss for the year of £1.01m the board agreed that the unpredictability and magnitude of revenue generating contracts was a significant problem.” Last October Evocutis warned that if it couldn’t form trading relationships with other companies it may go bust.

At the time the group said that should none of its discussions reach a successful conclusion, and in the absence of new finance, the directors will need to consider the financial viability of the company.

It finished with the conclusion that it may have to look at the possible distribution of any residual value to shareholders.

Evocutis has created a patented human skin equivalent called LabSkin, which emulates living skin tissue in research and product testing.

But the group has failed to make any money from its inven- tion.

Its goal was for global health and pharmaceutical companies to use LabSkin as a predictive model for the behaviour of cosmetic products on human skin.