A multi-million-pound facility has been launched in Staffordshire which will revolutionise the way companies develop products for sale on the international advanced ceramics market.
The AMRICC Centre, at Stone Business Park, provides research, testing and development facilities for organisations looking to commercialise their innovative ideas.
AMRICC – which stands for Applied Materials Research, Innovation and Commercialisation Company – is the brainchild of international materials technology specialists Lucideon along with Stoke-on-Trent City Council.
And as part of its own expansion, Lucideon aims to move its 200-plus workforce into adjoining buildings to AMRICC on the Brooms Road site by the middle of the year – vacating its long-standing headquarters in Penkhull, Stoke-on-Trent.
This will lead to more specialist and technical jobs being created by the burgeoning company too.
The centre has been developed as part of a £18.27 million government grant secured by the Midlands Industrial Ceramics Group, of which Lucideon is a member.
It has been fitted out with the very latest facilities and technologies, which include adaptable pilot lines, high temperature furnaces, drying chambers and ovens.
Users of the centre will also be able to tap into support of on-site technicians and scientists. Any business will be able to access the centre either through membership of AMRICC or on a pay-as-you-go basis.
AMRICC CEO, Dr Cathryn Hickey, pictured above, said: “The AMRICC Centre is a landmark project, which will help industry develop, prove and deploy advanced materials much faster and more effectively to meet changing market needs.
“It will deliver a real competitive advantage for the Midlands and UK economy overall by enabling companies to commercialise new innovation through access to the latest pilot and scale-up capabilities, coupled with the highest level of support to solve key technical challenges.”
“Under its remit to provide the ‘go-to centre’ for ceramics commercialisation and give organisations unprecedented opportunities to enter global markets, the facility will operate an open access model, enabling companies to join through membership of the AMRICC Centre, or on a ‘pay-as-you-go’ basis.
Dr Hickey added: “As an open access facility, the AMRICC centre is able to work with companies to trial new products at commercial pilot scale, so helping to de-risk the use of new technologies much quicker.”
Eventually both AMRICC and Lucideon plan to permanently move to the proposed Advanced Ceramics Campus in North Staffordshire’s Ceramic Valley Enterprise Zone. There is no current time scale on this move.
