September 30th, 2004

P2i’s pilot plasma plant went into commercial production today after successfully completing its commissioning trials.

Looking like an enormous stainless steel fridge, 7 foot high, the pilot plant has the capacity to give a wide range of products a super liquid-repellent treatment using P2i’s patented plasma enhancement process. On its first day of commercial production, trays containing hundreds of medical sampling devices were enhanced, making them effectively unwettable and, thereby, leaving no dirty residues after use.

“Our pilot plant is set up to enhance a wide range of products, from small electronic and medical devices through to suits and uniforms”, said Dr Stephen Coulson, P2i’s Technical Director. “We have even had someone asking whether we could enhance the nose cone of a Formula 1 car to make rain and dirt slick away faster. Now we have the capacity to do that.”

Speaking at the commissioning sign-off, John Sambell, Managing Director of JLS Designs, which designed and supplied the pilot plant to P2i’s specifications, commented, ”we have set up P2i’s pilot plant to be highly flexible to customers’ production or process development needs. Besides laying products on trays, you can also hang racks of clothes in the plasma, run fabrics reel-to-reel or simply tumble smaller items in a basket.”

Quentin Compton-Bishop, P2i’s CEO, added, “With the help of JLS designs, P2i has a suite of tried and tested plasma chamber models which we can supply to licensees as part of a turn-key package for enhancing their products. The pilot plant also adds to our in-house capacity to provide contract enhancement and product development services to a wider range of customers.”