Read past three quarters of a million-pound loss before tax and you will find an engineering firm signing deals worldwide and revenues increasing by 19 per cent.

Cheltenham-headquartered Versarien has revealed its half year results to the end of September showing a rise in revenues to £5.22 million.

Its losses before tax were "stable" at £0.78 million, compared with £0.77 million in 2017.

All of which rounded off a hugely busy year for the firm, which has been busy sewing up the future market in graphene - signing deals and collaborations in sectors as diverse as cycling and tyre manufacture to consumer goods and aerospace.

On its intellectual property acquisition trail it revealed in October it had bought a controlling share in Spanish company Gnanomat and this month unveiled another memorandum of understanding with a Chinese manufacturer.

"The last few months have seen significant progress across the group, in both our emerging technologies and more mature businesses.

"Expansion of the graphene business into China has attracted a large number of suitors and we are repeating the process in other Asian territories.

"Our collaboration agreements are progressing well, in particular with AECOM where we have recently announced the first supply of graphene enhanced compound," said Neill Ricketts, chief executive Versarien.

"With the global progress we have made over the last few months, and with funds from our placing in September we are extremely well positioned for the future and look forward to reporting further success over the coming months."

Graphene is described as an "allotrope" of carbon consisting of a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice. It is said to be super lightweight, super conductive, and super strong and its applications are not yet fully explored.