Birmingham firms bring medical innovation home

A partnership made in Birmingham could change the way single use surgical instruments are manufactured and help bring production back to the region.

Blink Medical has teamed up with Andel Plastics to produce a mould tool that will allow a device used in eye surgery to be made out of plastic instead of ‘traditional’ stainless steel.

The Double Ended Marker is lighter, safer, and more cost effective to manufacture, which will lead to considerable savings for the NHS and health organisations across Europe, the US and, potentially, the Far East.

Backed by strategic support from the Manufacturing Advisory Service (MAS), the partnership will involve production of the instrument moving from China to Birmingham, creating three immediate jobs in the process.

It also strengthens the relationship between Blink Medical and Andel, with the latter recently investing nearly £70,000 in a new cleanroom to assemble specialist instrument packs for the medical sector.

“We are continually looking at ways where we can bring innovation to the marketplace and recognised at an early stage that there was potential to consider plastic as a material instead of the traditional reliance on metal,” commented Roger Tyler, managing director of Blink Medical.

“This isn’t something we could do on our own and needed to seek the expertise of a plastic injection moulder, which is where Andel came into the equation.”

He continued: “Tapping into MAS support to help with prototyping and development, we were able to successfully come up with a RP plastic surgical instrument that was more functional and cost effective to produce than its metal counterpart.

“We’ve just started to get our first orders and we expect to achieve sales approaching £100,000 during the next twelve months, with the promise of this ramping up considerably in the coming years.

“This is just the start and we’re already looking at how we can develop further innovations.”

Established in 1975, Andel Plastics is a toolmaker and injection moulding specialist, working across automotive, plumbing, rail and signalling.

The Tyseley-based company, which employs 20 people and will turnover £1.4m in 2014, had also been making inroads into the medical sector so was delighted to be given the opportunity to work with Blink Medical on the new device and in undertaking specialist assembly of its procedure packs.

Helen Pitt, managing director, continued: “This is the breakthrough we’d been looking for in this sector and has given us the platform to invest £70,000 into a dedicated clean room facility that has six stations and enough capacity to meet future volume increases.

“We’ve already taken on two manufacturing experts in this area and expect a further couple of appointments as and when production starts to gather pace.”

She added: “We’ve had a lot of support from MAS in reviewing our processes and supporting us on accessing funding that helped with prototyping costs…probably speeding up the project by about three months.

“The fact our Advisor was also working with Blink Medical was a major factor as he understood the strengths of each business and what the marketplace expected.”

Working in partnership with UKTI, the Manufacturing Advisory Service is delivering ReshoreUK, a specialist initiative designed to support SME manufacturers to build capacity and capabilities to take advantage of production returning to the UK.

Martin McKeever, MAS advisor, concluded: “A lot of companies – both large and small – are looking to bring back production they had sent overseas and it’s our role to help firms validate their decisions then support them to make it happen.

“This is a great example of two local companies working together to develop a new solution for a high value market…better still it means the manufacture of the new device is completed in the UK and not in the Far East.”

Blink Medical was the UK’s first supplier of single use instruments and customised instrument sets in 1994 and now, ten years on, is seen as a global leader in this field turning over £3.2m and employing 18 staff.