Part of the attraction were some hefty estimates of market size – some studies claimed demand would rise to $120billion a year by 2020.
The big hurrah of the strategy’s launch was followed by, well, not much. Plastic electronics faded into the background.
But while it’s not front and centre, it hasn’t faded away. The Centre for Process Innovation, for example, continues to develop printed electronics solutions, with a strong focus on the supply chain. And it realises that plastic electronics is not a product, it’s an enabling solution.
Another company working away quietly is PragmatIC, which has been developing technology that replicates the functionality of silicon based devices, but on flexible substrates.
One of the markers which indicates how well a market is progressing is when interest is shown in start ups by multinationals. And the £18million investment in PragmatIC by Avery Dennison is a hint that the potential of plastic electronics is at last beginning to be recognised.
This circles around to a perennial problem in UK industry; our apparent inability to build world scale businesses from technology invented here. Wouldn’t it be great if PragmatIC – and others – could grow to a global scale while remaining UK based and go some way towards meeting the lofty expectations laid out in the plastic electronics strategy?
