Glasspoint Solar considers future IPO exit

“[The next form of financing would be a] mezzanine round and an exit would be an IPO,” said Rod MacGregor, CEO and co-founder of GlassPoint Solar, a US-based company that designs, manufactures and installs solar steam generators for the oil and gas industry. “Shell and the Sultanate of Oman are our strategic partners. We’re entering a growth phase.”

MacGregor has been involved in kick-starting a handful of venture-backed companies, which have all been either floated on the public markets or sold to corporates through trade sales.

The most notable of these was Insignia Solutions Ltd., which was floated on NASDAQ in the late eighties, before the UK had a technology-focused exchange in the form of AIM.

Pre-profit company GlassPoint, which was set up in 2009, is one of only a few solar energy companies to go after the potentially $110bn a year market for solar enhanced oil recovery (EOR).

“If you reduce EOR emissions by one per cent you can reduce emissions by more than every electric vehicle ever made,” MacGregor said. “Oil and gas is the next big thing [in solar]. Oil fields consume gigawatts. In heavy oil production, 20 per cent of the barrels of heavy oil [produced] are consumed just making it.”