Haydale Graphene Industries Plc (LON:HAYD), the global advanced materials group, has announced today the launch of its Taiwan operations, Haydale Technologies (Taiwan) Co., Ltd., (‘HTW’), which will operate as a dedicated producer and sales outlet of graphene-based conductive inks and pastes, including other functional and specialty inks and pastes.
Located in Kaohsiung, Southern Taiwan, HTW has largely completed the set-up of its own dedicated ink production facility to meet its anticipated demand. Haydale has been working in Taiwan for more than 18 months, having determined in late 2015 that the region’s focus on functional inks and pastes could provide an important route to market for Haydale’s tailored graphene-based materials. The work involved market assessments, in-country technical capability, ability to gain regulatory approvals and gaining a deep understanding of the targeted print customers’ needs.
Haydale’s proprietary graphene-based pastes have been developed in the Far East focussed on the Self-Monitoring Blood Glucose (‘SMBG’) device market. To date Haydale’s inks have been incorporated into test products with several Taiwan-based printing customers who have been progressing regulatory approval for sales of their diagnostic products incorporating Haydale inks into the US and EU markets. Although Haydale has no current visibility on order quantities, the Group anticipates that sales of its tailored graphene-based paste to these customers will commence during the 2017 calendar year.
Traditionally, highly conductive inks and pastes have been dominated by metal-based inks incorporating silver and copper. Whilst graphene is not expected to completely replace the conductive properties of silver-based inks, provided it meets acceptable printer specifications, graphene offers many advantages such as recyclability, lower unit costs and the fact that the material is not susceptible to volatile market price movements.
A key reason for Haydale targeting the SMBG sector opportunity is that, according to market research firm Research & Markets, the SMBG device market is expected to grow to over US$16 billion by 2020 as the incidence of diabetes is increasing dramatically, with more than 640 million sufferers estimated worldwide by 20401.
Commenting on the opening of HTW, Ray Gibbs, CEO of Haydale Graphene Industries Plc, said: “The development of our graphene-based inks has been focused on the screen printing market for over three years, which started with Haydale being awarded an Innovate UK grant for the production of ink for the self-monitoring blood glucose device market. Three years later we have expectations on securing sales this calendar year and the necessary FDA and regulatory approvals through dedicated printers such that we were confident to open a operation facility in Taiwan to service our collaboration partners’ needs. The biomedical sensor market is massive and we consider that the Far East has a significant portion of this growing sector. I look forward to making more announcements on progress in ink sales over the coming months.”
