CPI’s National Formulation Centre set to open

Published: 20-Feb-2018

The Centre for Process Innovation, the UK’s technology innovation provider for process manufacturing, announced that its National Formulation Centre will officially be opened on the 15 March 2018

The centre joins the Centre for Process Innovation's (CPI’s) existing Printable Electronics and Graphene Application Centres based out of the NETPark site at Sedgefield, County Durham.

The national facility will enable SMEs and academic partners to engage easily with multi-national businesses to develop, prove and commercialise innovative products and processes in formulation science.

As part of the official opening event, there will be facility tours, presentations and networking opportunities for industrialists and academics.

Breaking ground in November 2016, the project is funded by the North East LEP as part of the North East Growth Deal from the UK Government.

The Local Growth Fund is supporting major capital investments to promote innovation, economic and skills infrastructure, and sustainable transport across the North East LEP area.

Formulation underpins many chemistry-enabled markets ranging from healthcare and pharmaceuticals, to oil and gas, and paints and lubricants. Examples of complex formulated products include many everyday products that are vital to ensuring our quality of life, such as foods, detergents, perfumes, cosmetics, paints, adhesives and lubricants.

However, the manufacture of such products is complex and has many challenges. The centre and its dedicated team of more than 50 highly trained scientists and engineers aims to assist in overcoming these formulation and production challenges to help companies to develop, prove, prototype and scale-up the next generation of formulated products.

Graeme Cruickshank, Director of Formulation at CPI, said: “CPI’s formulation facilities are flexible, allowing us to support the design of products and manufacturing processes for a range of formulated products, based on complex solids, complex liquids, nanomaterials and polymers. We have built a strong industrially trained scientific and technical team with a wealth of experience in formulation development and characterisation.”

“We also have a number of on-going strategic projects with our academic and industry partners, which aim to address some of the key challenges we were given by our industry steering group. These new capabilities will ultimately be located here in the National Formulation Centre as an open access facility, which will enable UK-based innovation.”

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