Alpina invests undisclosed amounts in Virtalis

Softbank

Alpina Partners, a growth market private equity firm has invested in Virtalis.

The details of the investment were not revealed. However, Alpina said founders, David Cockburn-Price and Andrew Connell, will remain as directors and are each retaining a stake in the business to participate in the future success of Virtalis. Steve Carpenter and Glyn Read will also remain as directors and the board will be joined by Christian von Stengel, a senior software sales executive.

Virtalis is headquartered in the UK, with offices in US, Germany, Finland and Malaysia, as well as partners and resellers worldwide.

Dr Florian Strehle, a partner at Alpina, commented on the latest addition to the investment firm’s portfolio, says: “We are excited to be supporting the next phase of Virtalis’ worldwide growth strategy. Virtalis has launched innovative software like Visionary Render, VR4CAD and GeoVisionary in recent years, to work with its well-known ActiveWorks VR display systems, and this is where we see the growth potential. We will work with the Virtalis management team to further develop the Company as a leading player in the global enterprise VR software market by leveraging our network and expertise.”

MD David Cockburn-Price, says: “Alpina is an experienced growth investor which will help us to ensure the sustainable development of Virtalis, especially with reference to our direct and indirect sales channels. We will become part of a larger group of innovative software businesses within Alpina’s investment portfolio, exploiting synergies on many different levels.”

Technical director, Andrew Connell, says: “My entire career has been spent nurturing Virtalis and its predecessor entities as the fledgling field of VR has moved from research demonstrator programmes within Universities to the compelling real-world, commercial toolkit it is today. Back in the 90s, many commentators said VR was dead – it has been gratifying to prove them wrong as Virtalis has brought VR solutions to industries as diverse as Engineering, Security, Academia, Asset Management and GeoScience. With the help of Alpina, we aim to rapidly develop our technology to reach a larger global user base.”

Alpina disclosed that funding was arranged by Phil Mason of Santander’s Growth Capital team in Manchester.

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