The printed electronics (PE) industry has continued to make headway in the market place, as new products reach commercial success. While it appears that 2014 will be a landmark year, with the plans for Bemis Company to commercialize Thin Film Electronics’ (Thinfilm) Intelligent Packaging Platform, a flexible sensing platform for the packaging market, there has been plenty of news form the industry during the past year as well.

There are lots of new products out on the market, which I will cover in next week’s email. Aside from Thinfilm, Cambrios, MC 10, T-Ink, PragmatIC Printing and many other companies are making gains in the flexible and printed electronics market. Isorg, Solicore, Plastic Logic and other PE manufacturers are also making headway in their respective fields.

Part of this success is due to the collaborations in the field, as companies are choosing to partner with specialists in other disciplines to develop products for consumers. Thin Film has built an ecosystem with Imprint Energy, Acreo AB, PST Sensors, Polyera, Solvay and Inktec. PragmatIC has its own ecosystem, working with the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI). CPI also works closely with Peratech, whose QTC (Quantum Tunnelling Composite) pressure sensing material is making gains in displays.

Material companies like cynora, SmartKem, Cima Nanotech and others are also earning awards for their materials. Research institutes and companies have begun building pilot production lines. CPI has an extensive production line in place, and organic photovoltaic specialist Disa Solar also opened its own line.

As always, there are plenty of changes in the industry as well. There have been some major acquisitions in the market; perhaps the most noteworthy was Cheil Industries’ acquisition of a majority stake in Novaled, a leader in OLED technologies and materials, in August. Cheil Industries, a subsidiary of Samsung (which owns the rest of Novaled), paid €260 million for the company. This signals the further growth in the OLED market.

One of the most interesting companies in the PE space has been Printechnologics, which has sold hundreds of millions of its sheetfed-printed Touchcode systems. Printechnologics is now part of T-Ink, another PE industry leader that has had strong commercial success.

In the RFID market, Quake Global acquired ODIN RFID. In the CIGS solar market, Hanergy, a leader in China’s renewable energy field, followed up on its 2012 acquisitions of MiaSole and Solibro by purchasing Global Solar Energy. Nanosolar, which was using a proprietary printing process, went out of business in the U.S. in July. In December, SolarWorld acquired Bosch’s silicon-based solar energy operations. On the equipment side, MGI Group acquired PE inkjet printer specialist Ceradrop.

Printed and flexible electronics are making gains toward commercialization, and it is likely that more consumers will be seeing these results in the coming year.