Adents bags $13M to fuel global expansion of serialization software business

Serialization software player Adents has wrapped up a $13 million fundraising round. The financing, which brings the amount raised by Adents over the past 18 months to $22 million, will support the company’s efforts to expand its partnership program in the U.S. and break into new markets.

Paris, France-based Adents turned to its long-standing backers NAXICAP Partners, Omnes Capital and CapHorn Invest for the investment. The three investment groups were on hand 13 months ago when Adents needed $9.5 million to fund the deployment of its serialization and traceability software on drug packaging lines in the U.S. and Europe. And they have now stepped up again at a time when Adents is trying to keep pace with the fast-emerging opportunity for traceability technologies.

Faced with concerns about the security of drug supply chains, regulators on both sides of the Atlantic have created serialization policies designed to tackle counterfeiting and theft. In the U.S., the Drug Supply Chain Security Act gives manufacturers until late in 2017 to start affixing product identifiers to drug packaging. The Falsified Medicines Directive in Europe is asking manufacturers to implement similar systems by the start of 2019.

With the deadlines giving fresh impetus to demand for software that can manage serialization and a strategic collaboration with Siemens delivering a boost to Adents specifically, the French company has decided it needs more money to execute its plans.

"This new round of funding addresses two strategic objectives for the company in the short term,” Adents CEO Christophe Devins said in a statement. “First, we believe it will strengthen our partnership program, with a strong focus on the development of a powerful “solutions partners” network in the U.S. Second, it will support the penetration into promising new international markets, such as the Middle East and Asia.”

The partner program discussed by Devins already involves tens of producers of printing technologies, packaging machines and other equipment on both sides of the Atlantic. Adents has also partnered with system integrators.

- read the release

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