720078SUTURE PLUS - Development Project resulting in a pre-production prototype to produce very high strength absorbable yarns for use in advanced medical sutures, with potential for spin off uses in other medical and non-medical applications.ClosedGRD Development of PrototypeInnovate UKInternational Healthcare customers using FET equipment have made us aware of a clear business opportunity to open up the fast growing world market for absorbable surgical sutures. They tell us that the market wants products that increase quality of life for an ageing population and speak of their need for yarns with much higher tenacity, to make sutures which offer higher holding strength and are less invasive to the body in use, giving opportunities to replace other conventional closure materials and / or use the higher performance in finer, low diameter sutures for new applications. The outcome of a recent Feasibility Study has shown that we can make absorbable suture materials with physical properties 30 - 50 % over present levels and allows us to establish a basis for further development work towards commercialisation We now have the necessary data to design a further programme of work at a cost of £440,000 with the aim of defining, specifying and building a pre-production prototype of a technologically innovative process. We have in-house, or can obtain, access to the necessary expertise to succeed in such a project, but need financial assistance to avoid cash flow limitations and complete the work within a 2 year timeframe. The developed know-how and the prototype will allow us to demonstrate our capability to achieve performance leaps to our customers to help them to differentiate their product ranges and for FET to achieve sales by providing technology and custom built equipment. A successful project outcome, pursued by further development work to commercialise for suture applications, could realise some £5.1mn new income to FET in the period 2015 to 2018 in the form of equipment sales and process licensing. We see additional potential benefits from spin off uses for the technology in non - medical areas and as an experimental tool for small scale evaluation of difficult-to-process / expensive raw materials.