Five years ago, a coalition of government and business inspiration and funding in Britain resulted in the creation of the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI), which today has three purposes: It provides services to the global business community in process innovation, consultancy and research, and in the formation and management of development partnerships; it establishes and runs publicly funded agencies and projects in emerging technologies; and it forms new companies through spin-offs and joint ventures. CPI is located in the North East part of England, which has a base of science manufacturing.

Two years into the CPI undertaking, a new venture was created under its umbrella, to focus on the nascent field of printed electronics. It is called PETEC, the Printable Electronics Technology Centre, and is located in Sedgefield, County Durham. PETEC’s stated goal is to provide assistance “to bring new printable electronics products to market quickly by offering facilities and expertise that are rarely available in-house. This reduces the client’s level and risk of capital investment.”

PETEC has brought together leading experts in design, development and prototyping for plastic and printed electronics. To date, senior engineers and scientists have 45 papers and 100 patents between them in the area of organic thin film transistors.

The latest good news for PETEC is the announcement of £20 million ($33.7 million) in funding for expansion of the center. It will receive £12 million ($20.2 million) from the UK government’s Advanced Manufacturing strategy, along with a further £8 million ($13.5 million) that will be channeled by Regional Development Agency One North East. In the next four years it is estimated that the investment will stimulate the creation of up to 250 jobs in the region and up to 1,500 jobs nationally.

The funding, according to center officials, will help to enhance the open access product development facilities at PETEC with the introduction of new equipment capable of prototyping applications in printable photovoltaics, ultra-efficient lighting, printable flexible displays, and new intelligent packaging.

“Our early investments focused on displays, on discrete focused steps,” says Tom Taylor, the director of PETEC. “That’s great for getting components into the supply chain, but not so if you want to produce a whole product. The next phase of investment will allow us to install a couple of pilot lines, which will enable companies to take a whole technology package through to completion.”

The center connects innovators in research with commercial activity using proof-of-concept devices and pilot scale manufacture, helping clients identify the materials, industrial steps and investments required to bring products to market quickly. Its facilities include high-tech cleanrooms and laboratories containing production and testing equipment. They are available on an open access basis to meet the needs of industry, for late-stage research and development, prototyping and pre-competitive stage mini-manufacturing of products based on printable electronics. The core services include contract R&D, licensing/equity investment, technology consultancy, foundry services, and space/equipment rental.

Today PETEC employs about 20 people, but that status will change fairly dramatically with the influx of the new funding. “We believe that to have an impact we should have about 100 people,” Taylor says. “The new investments will get us to about 30 to 40 people. We need to be double that in five years’ time. We will only try to raise the funds if the technologies we are working on get traction. Our developmental work has been proceeding like chapters in a book: Chapter 1 is barrier films, Chapter 2 is thin film transistors, and Chapter 3 is pilot lines. We would ask for more money only if the opportunity is there to use it wisely. We have to see the whole industry evolve, with products moving into the marketplace.”

When PETEC began it had an aggressive commercial model, Taylor notes. “We had capital funding and our revenue came from selling intellectual property space.In the future we will be looking for more foundation funding. Ours is very much a mixed model of funding, with 50 percent coming from the industry.”

These days, Taylor says, industry participants are seeing the size of their projects shrinking as the economy suffers. “On the other hand,” he adds, “companies are preserving strategic programs. People look back to the 1990s when big investments were made during the downturn. They were at the top of the pile when the world came out of recession. Companies inevitably have to cut back when sales are down, but at same time they are keeping strategic programs alive.”

PETEC’s new investment will result in the following:

• 500 square meters of new hi-tech equipment space for large-area application and production of pilot product manufacturing;

• The development of new applications and knowledge which, it is hoped, will attract new companies to the UK;

• New private sector investment into novel lighting and solar energy harvesting applications;

• Key technology applications in wide area displays, photovoltaic generation, novel lighting and smart packaging by stimulating collaborations with new companies and linking with academia; and

• The development of a regional and UK-wide display, lighting and photovoltaic supply chain.

As to the creation of up to 1,500 jobs nationally through the investment, Taylor offers this perspective:

“We have looked at the supply chain, and my view is that some of the materials going into displays will have entered the market over the next two to three years. If you factor in that the market will grow to probably a billion dollars in next three or four years, and if we get a 20 percent share of that, you can see what the jobs are. Since the beginning, over five years, CPI has created 1,500 jobs.

“We are quite determined to get our early technologies delivered because we see them entering the market quite quickly. We are choosing the lighting area where you can enter with high margin products, then spin off into the photovoltaic area.

“The fact is that we are connecting the supply chain here. We have placed subcontracts on companies to supply the chain. We have educated them about this market. For being so active in commercialization, we will accelerate it. That’s where the jobs will come.”