The bottom line was boosted ...,

Last month’s third Industrial Solutions Breakfast was a well-attended success, with delegates remarking on not only the quality of the University facilities available for their use, but also the relevance of the speakers from locally-based companies Barden Corporation (UK) Ltd and Fine Tubes Ltd.

Starting with a networking breakfast, attendees, who varied from manufactures to metallic specialists to a cosmetics company, had the opportunity to meet and exchange details. Claire briefly welcomed the group, explained the background to the event and the opportunity to receive 12 hours of free support from the Electron Microscopy Centre (EMC); an opportunity available to all eligible small-to-medium sized companies in the South West (excluding Cornwall) throughout 2014.

Abdul Saeid from Fine Tubes and Gary Hughes from Barden then introduced their respective companies, giving a valuable insight to their approach to quality engineered products, their markets and their companies' objectives.

Each described how they have worked with the EMC for a number of years as an essential, readily-available 'out-sourced' part of their business, particularly looking at:

• surface quality - essential when finish-quality is intrinsic to the performance of the product
• contaminant identification - effectively reducing waste
• pressure test - identifying failures (above)
• plating consistency and thickness (right)
• new process development, validations and control
• materials and defect investigations
• new product development 

Sally Sharpe of the University's Enterprise Solutions team, highlighted other subsidised support available for business, including Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTP), Santander graduate placements and the broader GAIN Growth Hub, which was launched on 1 April 2014 (www.gaininbusiness.com) and which is part of the Plymouth and Peninsula City Deal.

To complete the event, delegates had the opportunity to visit the EMC and the University’s Materials Characterisation Lab, viewing tensile testing, electro-polishing, rapid prototyping and other optical and laser microscopy equipment.

The next event in our Industrial Solutions series will be aimed at Ice-Cream and other dessert producers and the product development/improvement opportunities offered by using electron microscopy (e.g. identifying the size of your product’s ice-crystals) – Wednesday 9 July 2014.

If you want to find out more, then please contact Claire on:

·         07738 858494

·         01752 588908

·         claire.pearce@plymouth.ac.uk