Lending public money to a Gloucestershire-based graphene company was looking like a good idea, until it announced this year it was running out of cash. The company, called Versarien and listed on the Alternative Investment Market, took the loan in 2020 from the government agency Innovate UK to expand the manufacture of its graphene technology for commercial use in products such as seats and concrete. However, Versarien put itself up for sale in September and the following month Time to Act, a Middlesbrough-based engineering company, came forward, initially saying it would buy the company for several hundred thousand pounds and take responsibility for the Innovate UK loan. But then it backed away and last week Versarien went into administration, leaving taxpayers — which had supported the company with a range of grants as well as the loan since 2010 — to join the queue of creditors. Time To Act is now in discussions with the administrators as a potential buyer of some of the assets.

Source: The Times December 08, 2025 00:06 UTC