Macrebur, the maker of a recycled plastic additive product for roads, is currently over funding on Seedrs and is just over halfway to its £4m target on AIN. Neither campaign appears to mention the other one.
It is a little confusing.
Following our piece here and some Qs to the company from Seedrs investors - the AIN camapign has been removed. When asked on Seedrs what this was all about, the CEO of Macrebur claimed that they had not put up the campaign on AIN and that this was merely a collection of HNWs all linked via a FB page. That'll be news to AIN. Confused? 15/10/18
Just to make things even simpler, we now discover that a deal is also on offer via Greenbackers - here - .https://www.greenbackers.com/the-pitch.html - this time we have a screenshot. They pitched to the Greenbackers on 11 October according to the platform. In this pitch the total being raised was not £2m, it was not £4m but £6m - £4.8m of which has already been raised. This £4.8m does seem to include include the £500k from Pontaq that is listed on Seedrs as part of their campaign - so this has been double counted. On Greenbackers there is a new amount of £1.8m already funded by Instarnac - something that is not mentioned on Seedrs.
To help clear up any misundertsnading and to explain the CEO's claim that we have facts wrong re the £1.8m Instarmac investment in Macrebur - here is a copy of the slide (slide 8 of 9) that is downloadable as Macrebur's PD on the Greenbackers website -
So the CEO can hardly claim we are wrong - Greenbackers maybe but that would have involved them putting this PD together for a pitch that the Macrebur CEO has readily agreed he went to. It states VERY clearly ''investment so far'' and then lists the £1.8m.
This may well be all perfectly fine but it does seem a little confusing. There are certainly claims on the Grenbackers PD that do not stand up to much scrutiny - this one in particular - 'MacRebur are not aware of any other company in the world using a mix of waste plastics to replace bitumen in asphalt'. See
https://www.smh.com.au/environment/sustainability/plastic-and-glass-road-that-could-help-solve-australia-s-waste-crisis-20180802-p4zv10.html
and to counter Macrebur's claim that somehow one of their distributors is responsible for the Austrlian article/product here is a little more on their product - which makes no mention of Macrebur or its products. Which begs another question - about the patent??
https://www.closetheloop.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Fact-Sheet-for-Plastic-and-Glass-Modified-Road.pdf
Readers and I mean those with a questioning mind, not the lemmings who seem to support Macrebur whatever they claim, might like to read this - https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/heard-about-miracle-plastic-roads-heres-why-its-not-solution-our-plastic-problem-36927 - it is not peer reviewed and is old (2015) but it throws up some interesting points. All these points seem to be irrelevant to Macrebur. For instance they claim that their bitumen (ie the bitumen with their additives in it) will not leach micro plastics into the environment - that is a 100% guarantee they give in their answer - no micro plastic leaching. Firstly this is not provable as their product has not been time tested for long enough to produce this data. Logic suggests that if a road degrades over time through use and more importantly weathering, then there has be leaching of all the road contains and if it contains plastics then QED micro plastics will be leached. Put that alongside the argument that we should be banning all production of plastic waste (and therefore eventually short use plastic) likes bags and the argument that hiding waste just encourages its production and Macrebur's claim to be a world saver looks rather foolish. To gain the sort foothold they are selling to investors, they will in fact be encouraging the ongoing production of plastic bags. How crazy is that??
If a company is going to use multiple online ways of raising the same funding in the same round, it doesnt seem too much to ask that they use the same information each time. Macrebur's claim on the Seedrs forum that we are wrong is completely untrue - check out the facts; they are all correct. As AIN have now removed this pitch, there is now no issue. We wish them and all who invest the best of luck.
Following our piece here and some Qs to the company from Seedrs investors - the AIN camapign has been removed. When asked on Seedrs what this was all about, the CEO of Macrebur claimed that they had not put up the campaign on AIN and that this was merely a collection of HNWs all linked via a FB page. That'll be news to AIN. Confused? 15/10/18
Just to make things even simpler, we now discover that a deal is also on offer via Greenbackers - here - .https://www.greenbackers.com/the-pitch.html - this time we have a screenshot. They pitched to the Greenbackers on 11 October according to the platform. In this pitch the total being raised was not £2m, it was not £4m but £6m - £4.8m of which has already been raised. This £4.8m does seem to include include the £500k from Pontaq that is listed on Seedrs as part of their campaign - so this has been double counted. On Greenbackers there is a new amount of £1.8m already funded by Instarnac - something that is not mentioned on Seedrs.
To help clear up any misundertsnading and to explain the CEO's claim that we have facts wrong re the £1.8m Instarmac investment in Macrebur - here is a copy of the slide (slide 8 of 9) that is downloadable as Macrebur's PD on the Greenbackers website -
So the CEO can hardly claim we are wrong - Greenbackers maybe but that would have involved them putting this PD together for a pitch that the Macrebur CEO has readily agreed he went to. It states VERY clearly ''investment so far'' and then lists the £1.8m.
This may well be all perfectly fine but it does seem a little confusing. There are certainly claims on the Grenbackers PD that do not stand up to much scrutiny - this one in particular - 'MacRebur are not aware of any other company in the world using a mix of waste plastics to replace bitumen in asphalt'. See
https://www.smh.com.au/environment/sustainability/plastic-and-glass-road-that-could-help-solve-australia-s-waste-crisis-20180802-p4zv10.html
and to counter Macrebur's claim that somehow one of their distributors is responsible for the Austrlian article/product here is a little more on their product - which makes no mention of Macrebur or its products. Which begs another question - about the patent??
https://www.closetheloop.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Fact-Sheet-for-Plastic-and-Glass-Modified-Road.pdf
Readers and I mean those with a questioning mind, not the lemmings who seem to support Macrebur whatever they claim, might like to read this - https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/heard-about-miracle-plastic-roads-heres-why-its-not-solution-our-plastic-problem-36927 - it is not peer reviewed and is old (2015) but it throws up some interesting points. All these points seem to be irrelevant to Macrebur. For instance they claim that their bitumen (ie the bitumen with their additives in it) will not leach micro plastics into the environment - that is a 100% guarantee they give in their answer - no micro plastic leaching. Firstly this is not provable as their product has not been time tested for long enough to produce this data. Logic suggests that if a road degrades over time through use and more importantly weathering, then there has be leaching of all the road contains and if it contains plastics then QED micro plastics will be leached. Put that alongside the argument that we should be banning all production of plastic waste (and therefore eventually short use plastic) likes bags and the argument that hiding waste just encourages its production and Macrebur's claim to be a world saver looks rather foolish. To gain the sort foothold they are selling to investors, they will in fact be encouraging the ongoing production of plastic bags. How crazy is that??
If a company is going to use multiple online ways of raising the same funding in the same round, it doesnt seem too much to ask that they use the same information each time. Macrebur's claim on the Seedrs forum that we are wrong is completely untrue - check out the facts; they are all correct. As AIN have now removed this pitch, there is now no issue. We wish them and all who invest the best of luck.
Both campaigns have a pre money valuation of £14.5m. But AIN is not, strictly speaking an investment platform. It promotes campaigns and then investors get in touch directly with the company and invest. According to the AIN Macrebur page, £2m of the target £4m has already been invested. As AIN state in their own words, this investment simply goes straight onto the company - there is not minimum level requirement as with ECF platforms.
So to cut to the chase - a pre money valuation of £14.5m would be the same as a post money valuation, after this £2m has been 'invested', of £16.5m. But the Seedrs valuation is also £14.5m.
According to AIN that £2m has already hit Macrebur's bank account. According to Seedrs it has not.
AIN are not FCA regulated although their new ECF platform, Seedtribe.com is.
