A company whose software helps optimise the design of offshore windfarms has raised £750,000 in the first investment by the new North East Accelerate Fund, which is managed by Mercia Ventures.

Kinewell’s solutions have been used on projects worldwide and the company won the King’s Award for Enterprise for International Trade last year. The investment will unlock a further six-figure sum in grant funding, bringing the total raised to over £1m. It will enable Kinewell to accelerate technology development and commercialisation, and to almost double in size within the next six months with the creation of ten new jobs.

Kinewell, which is based in Wallsend, North Tyneside, was founded by engineer Andrew Jenkins while studying for a PhD at Newcastle University. The first product, launched in 2015, helps to optimise the design of cable layouts.

The technology – which combines AI, supercomputing power and advanced algorithms – can assess millions of different options and identify the most effective materials and layouts in minutes. It typically saves 20% on the costs of the cabling system while cutting months off the development time.

The company now also offers software to design turbine layouts and transmission systems. Its latest products take account of the interactions between all three – cabling, turbine and transmission systems – and claim to reduce the cost of offshore wind farms by 6%, which can make all the difference when securing investment for a project.

Kinewell currently employs 12 staff and has a client base that includes global players such as Equinor, SSE Renewables, Parkwind and Eurus Energy. The Accelerate funding is its first external investment. The company is currently working on three grant-funded innovation and development projects.