Technical plastics firm Carclo Technical Plastics (CTP) is a company we’ve come to know very well. Our past meetings have uncovered opportunity, certain difficulties and shed light on some truly shrewd management decisions. CTP has done a lot over the last few years and is now a highly flexibility and innovation driven business.

“We have seen robust performance in our medical and optical business,” says Martin Day, Director, European Sales and Marketing.

When we last spoke to Day, the company was making good progress in manufacturing bespoke medical consumables and devices. He had helped drive this performance, with the group previously deciding to shift attention away from the automotive, electronics and consumer products markets that had been severely hit by the global economic downturn and subsequent recession. It paid off. “Moving further into the medical arena has been great for business,” says Day. “We are continuing to drive into the diagnostics industry, specifically in point of care products; also in the pharmaceutical arena through asthma inhalers and things like that.”

CTP was formed during the 1990s following a number of strategic acquisitions of well-established companies by parent Carclo plc. Its commitment to manufacturing bespoke injection moulded components for customers in the medical, pharmaceutical, diagnostics and eye care industries has seen the business continue to thrive. “We have the engineering skills and the global footprint to offer a lot of stability to our customers and the ability to develop new products in a highly innovative market,” Day says. “Our optical division is also thriving and it specialises in the design and development of lenses and optics, which manage the light output from LEDs. LED lighting has been seen as a huge growth area.”

CTP has expanded its manufacturing capacity and now produces optical plastic products in the UK and U.S.

“2009 was very good in terms of profitability continuing to make improvements,” Day admits. “That was against sales that have grown strongly in the medical industry. They had actually declined elsewhere, but that was a managed decline. We stopped supplying a lot of our automotive customers because they were really in financial difficulties and, of course, that was an opportunity for us to get out of that market. As a result of that, the profitability actually increased. That was a good decision that we made and we have continued to win new medical programmes in the mean time.”

CTP’s global footprint certainly gives it a competitive advantage. For the past five years or more, the company has been investing in new or emerging technologies, such as soluble polymer applications, inkjet deposition onto plastics and microfluidics. More recently, the firm has opened a plant in India and new programs have been installed in its Czech operation.

“The lower cost regions of the world are increasingly important in terms of passing on the best price to its customers,” Day says. “In actual fact, to break a common misconception, there is not a lot of difference between manufacturing in the UK, where we are still a very proud, high quality producer, and manufacturing in the Czech Republic, in terms of the commercial side of things these days. But what our presence in that country/region does allow is closer proximity to key customers.

A lot of our big customers and potentially big customers are setting up in Eastern Europe, and that continues. Our ability to be able to supply them locally is pretty key for the group.”

Because of the global nature of the business, CTP’s systems are continually updated, and funding is set aside for investment in new or emerging technologies. “We have installed new MRP and CAD systems in order to increase efficiency,” says Day.

A GOOD YEAR
2009 was certainly a good year for CTP and 2010 has continued in much the same way. “The general trading environment is improving and, if sustained, this should benefit the parts of our business that have been affected by the downturn,” Day says. “We continue to win new medical and optical business and we are confident of delivering further progress in the future.”

CTP continues to make strides forward with its Conductive Inkjet Technology business. In 2009, it won a landmark deal to develop and launch a new touch screen for use in mobile phones. The deal, worth up to £1.2 million with U.S. electronics heavyweight Atmel Corporation, will see Conductive Inkjet Technology install a new production line at its Cambridge facility to produce touch screen sensors.

The production line will be operational in the second half of this year, with mass production beginning in 2011. It has also joined forces with lighting specialist Cambridge Display Technology to produce an innovative new lighting device. “As I said earlier, our global footprint is particularly attractive to customers,” Day concludes. “There are opportunities in many markets.”