Regulations require the weighing of tens of millions of containers around the world, and Bison has recently added the likes of Nasa, Virgin Galactic and the US Army and Air Force to its list of customers.
``It's pretty good to have this lot on board,'' Bison director Greg Fahey said.
While the amount of investment has not been disclosed, he said the capital boost would be used in marketing, sales, inventory and research and development, for 2014-established company.
Brothers Mark and Greg Fahey have developed what they said they believed to be world-first portable container weighing scales.
With the C-Jacks, four small jacks lift and weigh a container on the ground, and a recent new product, the C-Legs, weighed containers on truck-trailer units.
Weights were stored on a smartphone app and cloud database, from where it could be entered into the transport logistics chain automatically.
Bison had sold its scales in more than 20 countries and had had inquiries from more than 100 other countries, Mr Fahey said.
The company had sought some capital investment last year to spur its growth opportunities, and besides Invest South ``numerous'' private investors in Dunedin had taken a shareholding in the company.
He could not disclose commercially sensitive information, but staff at the Dunedin headquarters had increased from three to 11, more than 50 of the weighing units were in use around New Zealand and they were ``selling actively'', he said.
Both types of scales were manufactured in Dunedin, several local suppliers providing components, plus some work being done in house, Mr Fahey said.
Bison has found itself in a niche market after the global shipping industry underwent regulatory changes last July.
Containers must now be weighed,
and are not permitted to be loaded on to a vessel without a verified weight. The previous system relied on declarations of weight, which was inaccurate and represented a safety hazard.
Mr Fahey said the accuracy level of the weighing had a plus or minus tolerance of 0.2% of any container's's total weight.
In terms of competitors, he believed Bison still had the edge with its ``unique product'', and the company had new research and development under way, and more products would be released, Mr Fahey said.
``This new capital allows us to build on our rapid growth over the last 12 months,'' he said.
Strong sales growth was forecast in Bison's key customer categories, including exporters, freight forwarders, military and project cargo operators. Sales were handled by a global network of dealers, he said.
Invest South, whose sole investor is the Community Trust of Southland, has taken a 6.35% share in Bison, while the New Zealand Venture Investment Fund has a 10.3% stake and Ice Angels Nominees a 5.67% stake.
Aside from the the Fahey brothers' majority, equal shareholdings, there are about 10 other Otago individuals or companies, mainly from Dunedin, with a stake in Bison.
Invest South chairman Peter Carnahan said the investment firm was impressed by both the innovative product lines Bison was developing and its track record for creating and commercialising innovative technology.
``While this company could be considered at an earlier stage than we would normally invest, we saw the potential in the people and the global opportunities,'' Mr Carnahan said in a statement.
Invest South was particularly interested in Bison because of its positioning in the industrial weighing and shipping industry after last July's change in the global regulatory environment.
