Ozone on a high with €1.7m investment

An Irish company that has been developing a rainwater collection device for use by households and businesses – Ozone Industries – has raised an additional €1.7m from investors in recent months.

It brings to well over €5m the amount the Wicklow-based company has raised since it was founded in 2010.

An investment firm headed by the founders of sports channel Setanta is a backer of the Wicklow firm that develops rainwater collection devices for residential and commercial use.

Danu Advisory Partners, which is controlled by Setanta co-founders Michael O’Rourke, Leonard Ryan, and Mark O’Meara, has invested €750,000 in Ozone Industries, which trades as Rainsafe Waters.

Money recently raised by Ozone was sourced from investors including Hopeford, a company controlled by Henry and Marie Bolger. They’re part of the family that owns Dublin-based engineering company Modern Plant. They invested €200,000 in Ozone in recent weeks.

Modern Plant has previously directly invested in Ozone. A number of existing investors in the company have also provided it with fresh funds.

Among those is Martina Annamalai, who is based in Malaga, Spain. Ms Annamalai is a director of UK company Janegi Investments, in which Dublin-based Rajendran Annamalai is also a director.

Enterprise Ireland has also invested a substantial amount of money in Ozone. Other investors include energy entrepreneur Louis Fitzgerald. He’s one of the original investors in Airtricity, which was founded by Eddie O’Connor.

The latest publicly available set of accounts for Ozone, for 2013, show that it made a €1.5m loss that year