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The Plenary Session of the Printed Electronics Exploitation Programme was attended by representatives from 16 companies, drawn from various industry sectors and different parts of the Printed Electronics value chain.
The goal being to review what the previous Programme sessions had found during the past 12 months and debate how to take advantage of the wide variety of PE devices now available commercially or in demo quantities.
IPI commenced the day by summarising the status of the technology and market developments that had been explored over the last 12 months and concluded that:
- although scale up is still a challenge, there are many opportunities for ‘hybrid’ systems and designers have a critical role to play especially in consumer-led applications.
- Printed Electronics developments have a natural ‘fit’ with packaging-type applications and offer exciting new ways of enabling consumers to interact with products.
The day continued with expert input from Soligie and the EU funded 3Plast and PrimeBits Consortia, on what devices are available, and for which markets.
This was complemented by input from Enfucell, who showed how printed batteries are set to revolutionise products and packaging using an on-board power source.
Quadro Design again challenged the technology providers to move from ‘technology push’ to market pull based on smart designs founded on solid consumer needs.
Reckitt Benckiser explained how a large multi-national brand owner is going about introducing innovative interactive products & packaging into its business. Its policy of ‘open innovation’ is set to help accelarate adoption.
Crown Technology complemented this by explaining the challenges it faces in introducing new technology for it metal-based packs and products.
Programme Members also benefitted from getting expert insights on the latest EU and UK funding calls in the area of smart & interactive packaging. This stimulated discussion about how SMEs, in particular, stand to benefit from new rules which allows up to 75% of their costs to be recovered.
The next session of the Programme is on the 24th November 2010 in London
The theme being:
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