Midas: Nuclear tie-up will lift Pursuit

By Joanne Hart for The Mail on Sunday
Updated: 06:54 EDT, 20 September 2010

This week, investments editor Joanne Hart looks at Pursuit Dynamics and Supergroup.

Heady brew: Pursuits's technology has been approved by German brewers

You can get additional Midas share tips each Wednesday by joining the exclusive Midas Extra club: Find out more

Pursuit Dynamics can help brewers make beer more efficiently, fire fighters extinguish fires more effectively and hospitals decontaminate wards infected with pernicious superbugs.

It can also enhance the way soups are made, speed up the process that turns corn into ethanol and even clean up decommissioned nuclear sites.

This may sound almost too good to be true, but Pursuit Dynamics has pioneered two revolutionary technological processes - an atomiser that enables water or chemicals to be distributed in a fine mist and a reactor that mixes and heats products faster and more successfully than anything else on the market.

The company was founded ten years ago, admitted to the Alternative Investment Market a year later and then spent many years developing its technology and looking at how it could be applied rather than working out how to make money from it.

This changed last September when Dutch-born Professor Roel Pieper was parachuted in as chief executive. His career includes senior directorships at American telecoms giant AT&T and world-leading electronics group Philips and he has spent the past 12 months trying to make Pursuit Dynamics a more commercial entity. The results are beginning to bear fruit.

Last Thursday the firm announced a joint venture with Britain's National Nuclear Laboratory to help with the decommissioning and decontamination of nuclear sites.

The venture will involve the use of Pursuit's atomiser technology, which is expected to cut the cost of decontamination by more than 50% and make it more effective.

The cost of decommissioning old sites in Britain is estimated at £73 billion and globally at about £300 billion. If Pursuit can grab just a fraction of that cash, it will materially transform the business.

On the atomiser side, Pursuit works with global fire protection firm Tyco as well and its reactors are even being used to help Heinz make tomato ketchup.

The reactors improve the way ingredients are heated up and mixed together and last month Pursuit was given the seal of approval by the German brewing association for its technology to be used by local beer companies.

Several contracts have also been put in place with American ethanol producers and Pieper believes that this division has great prospects.

Pursuit is loss-making at the moment but brokers forecast profits of more than £19 million by 2012.

Midas verdict: Pursuit Dynamics has proved its kit works and it is beginning to make real headway with large corporate customers.

The shares are 355p but supporters believe they could nearly triple to 900p over the next two years.

Adventurous investors should have a punt and see whether the company's fans are right.

• You can get additional Midas share tips each Wednesday by joining the exclusive Midas Extra club: Find out more