On Friday when a Gloucestershire engineering firm announced it was aiming to raise not less than £2.9 million it appears to have gotten investors more than a little excited.

Those in the know jumped at the chance to invest and this morning Cheltenham-based Versarien revealed it had beaten its target and raised nearly £5.2 million.

The 2,000,000 new ordinary shares were offered through on-line funding platform PrimaryBid.com at a discount of 18 per cent on the closing price on the day (Friday, September 21).

Neill Ricketts, co-founder and chief executive officer of Versarien, which is at the forefront of the emerging graphene industry, said: "We are very encouraged by the tremendous demand generated on the PrimaryBid platform in such a short period.

"PrimaryBid's innovative platform allowed us to seamlessly access retail investors at the same time and terms as institutional investors. Retail investors remain an important constituent to us and we are pleased to have allowed them access to this fundraise."

The sale mirrors a share issue by the firm back in November last year when it opened the door to investors hopeful of raising £1.2million and wrestled it shut 20 minutes later after £2.9million had been taken.

"We raised nearly £2.9million and we only wanted £1.2million. We could not close the sale quick enough. It was staggering," said Mr Ricketts, who co-founded Versarien in his native Forest of Dean in 2007.

As for the most recent shares, the offer closed at 7.22 pm on Friday and the Company will now issue and allot a total of 3,554,893 new ordinary shares.

Application will be made to the London Stock Exchange for those shares to be admitted to trading on AIM. Dealings is expected to start at 8am on September 27. Shares were up more than four per cent this morning (September 24).