SAFE ID closes €10 million second round of financing
Passport personalization company looks to expand its ePassport business, move into other industries; Atlas Ventures and Wellington Partners, as well as the National Innovation Fund of Kazakhstan, put up the cash; deal follows CCR Logistics Systems’s equity purchase
Germany-based SAFE ID Solutions, a supplier of passport solutions — readers may recall its MS 300 inkjet-based manual passport personalisation system that can churn out up to 180 passports per hour — has closed a €10 million second round of financing with the company’s existing main shareholders Atlas Ventures and Wellington Partners, as well as the National Innovation Fund of Kazakhstan (NIF). The added funding is intended to help broaden the company’s competitive strength in the growing ePassport market, as well as in identity and process management issues beyond pure government applications.
A similar interest was behind an earlier announcement that Germany-based CCR Logistics Systems — known for developing IT-aided reporting and clearing in the recycling trade — would acquire a 5 percent interest in the company with the option of a further 5 percent at a later date. “Within a short period of time, SAFE ID Solutions has been able to establish itself as a provider of secure personalisation and management solutions for identification documents,” said Karsten Neugebauer, CEO of SAFE ID. “We must now profitably transfer this technology to other fields of application. The constantly growing demand for efficient and secure identification, authentication, and management of persons, products and documents works in our favour here.”
-read more in this company news release (.pdf)
