CPI’s National Formulation Centre Set to Open

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

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.

Breaking ground in November 2016, the project is funded by the North-East Local Enterprise Partnership as part of the North – East Growth Deal from Government.

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

The centre joins CPI’s existing Printable Electronics and Graphene Application Centres based out of the NETPark site at Sedgefield, County Durham.

By integrating the National Formulation Centre alongside these pre-existing facilities, CPI can offer a unique collaborative approach necessary to advancing innovation.

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’ve 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.”_

If you work in formulation science and would like to find out more about partnering with CPI please contact us.

To find out more about the official opening event and register your attendance.

Notes to the Editor

About CPI

The Centre for Process Innovation is a UK-based technology innovation centre and part of the High Value Manufacturing Catapult. The company uses applied knowledge in science and engineering combined with state of the art development facilities to enable its clients to develop, prove, prototype and scale up the next generation of products and processes.

Established to support the UK process manufacturing industry, CPI collaborates with universities, SMEs and large corporations to help overcome innovation challenges. Operating across a broad range of technologies, partners are supported at every stage; from concept to market; business support to technology development; and from scale up to supply chain intervention. CPI consists of dedicated national innovation centres that support industrial biotechnology and biorefining, printable electronics, biologics and formulation. The centres enable advancements in major markets such as healthcare, electronics, food and drink, aerospace, automotive, materials, and energy. These world-leading, digitally enabled and open access facilities are available for partners to get their products and processes to market quickly with minimal risk. Utilising strong networks, CPI brings together a range of partners in the delivery of innovation projects, with a common goal of strengthening the UK’s position in High Value Manufacturing.