There has been movement recently in the M&A front for printed electronics. Not all mergers are completed by multi-national corporations, though; such is the case with PragmatIC Printing Ltd.’s acquisition of the printed electronics business of Nano ePrint Ltd., a specialist in the design and manufacturing of planar nano-electronics.

PragmatIC Printing is a newly formed company headquartered in Cambridge, UK. Scott White, CEO of PragmatIC Printing, was the CEO of Nano ePrint, whose fundamental technology was developed by University of Manchester Professor Aimin Song in 2000. Nano ePrint was spun out of the university in 2006.

“PragmatIC Printing has acquired the printed electronics business of Nano ePrint in order to further develop its technology for printed nano-devices, as well as expand the imprint process platform to other device architectures,” White said.

White said the move to launch the new company in Cambridge will lead to more possibilities in terms of developing new capabilities.

“We are relocating from Manchester to Cambridge,” White noted. “Cambridge is a center of expertise in printed electronics, with Plastic Logic, CDT, Cambridge Integrated Knowledge Center and Cambridge University being located here. PragmatIC has an experienced core team based in Cambridge with significant prior expertise in both printed electronics and other applications of imprint technologies.”

Nano ePrint has had success in the PE space, most notably with its partnership with Novalia Ltd. aimed at developing all-printed electronic greeting cards for Tigerprint Ltd., a subsidiary of Hallmark. The company is also partnering with consumer goods and packaging companies on utilizing PE to differentiate product packaging, as well as developing security applications.

White said that the Tigerprint project remains on track for delivering prototypes at the end of March this year.

“Our collaboration with Tigerprint is due to come to an end at March, as we are completing our prototypes,” he said.

White noted that fabricating printed logic for Tigerprint should not be a problem. PragmatIC uses a production process similar to holographic printing, and offers high repeatability at a low cost, printing thousands of devices in a square millimeter or less.

“Fabrication on our part is very tractable,” he said “The goal now is to be able to integrate our work with the other printed electronics components.”

White is clearly optimistic about the greater resources that PragmatIC Printing now can utilize.

“The biggest benefit of this transition is the scope to apply a greater level of resources, both personnel and finances, to existing commercial projects and also to take on additional projects. We now have secure funding to expand our business into other areas,” White said. “This should open up more opportunities for us.”