Universal Sensors and Grant Instruments have forged a manufacturing partnership thanks to the matchmaking service offered by the East of England Innovation Relay Centre (IRC)
Universal Sensors needed a local manufacturing partner to commercialise the design of its potentiometric biosensor reader, to provide a prototyping service, printed circuit board layout expertise, and ensure that the final product would ramp to volume.
As an early stage technology development company, it also wanted to work with a partner that had a good track record and an established reputation in the worldwide scientific and life sciences sectors.
"We talked to David Reynolds at the IRC about suitable partners as they offer a free partnering service to organisations based in the region," said Duncan Purvis, technical and business development manager at Universal Sensors.
"We were introduced to the technologies team within Grant and were impressed by the breadth of their capability and their willingness to sit down with us to understand our problems and technical challenges and find solutions to them.
"In addition, partnering with a company whose brand is synonymous with quality and reliability is clearly advantageous," added Duncan Purvis.
"The partnership has worked really well and the first batch of Grant-manufactured readers has shipped to trial customers - a second batch is currently in production".
Universal Sensors's low-cost highly-portable 12-channel biosensor platform utilises patented universal transducer system (UTS) technology - under a contractual relationship from Sensortec - to provide rapid and ultra-sensitive detection of contaminants, toxins and disease markers in complex samples such as milk, homogenates, serum, blood and urine.
For example, it has a detection range of 10 parts per trillion (the equivalent of one eye dropper in 100 Olympic swimming pools) and gives highly accurate results in less than 15 minutes.
Potential applications are extensive and include pharmaceutical, clinical diagnostics, environmental monitoring and food quality assurance.
David Reynolds, European technology adviser for the East of England IRC, said: "Finding and forging the right partnerships is a fundamental challenge for many technology based businesses and my job is to minimise the risk for my clients by getting to know them as individuals and understanding their businesses intimately.
"This is a highly personalised service and companies that work with us get access to the world's largest technology partnering network with around 1400 people in 250 organisations across 31 countries".
The IRC is funded by the East of England Development Agency and the European Commission and is focused on building effective partnerships for regional 'technology' companies.
Grant has worked with the IRC for several years and through it has forged a number of successful partnerships with technology companies in the region.
Grant launched its bespoke design/manufacturing service (Grant Technologies) in response to an increasing demand for fast turnaround custom-built solutions across scientific and industrial markets.
"We are strong supporters of the services offered by David and his team at the IRC as it overcomes the big problem of finding compatible partners," said Paul Pergande, head of Grant Technologies.
"David knows our business well and was confident that we'd be a good match for Universal Sensors given their requirements and overall objectives.
"We are delighted to be working alongside the team at Universal Sensors to help bring to market its ground breaking biosensor reader, which, due to its rapid speed of test and ultra-sensitivity, clearly has huge potential in the life sciences market."
