The Materials Innovation Factory is pleased to announce Croda International Plc as first company to take up residency in its Research hotel.
Croda International Plc, who create make and sell innovative and sustainable speciality chemicals, has opened their Centre of Innovation for Formulation Science on the first floor of the £68million facility that will enable them to utilise state-of-the-art automated technologies to further enhance their formulation science knowledge and capability across all their market sectors.
The capabilities available at the MIF will allow Croda to gain a more detailed understanding of ingredient interactions, actives delivery and optimised formulation development for any given application, through design of experiment, faster robotic formulating platforms, high-throughput analytical testing and advanced data analysis.
This will also allow them to better exploit the functionality of existing and new products in a wider range of formulation systems, giving their customers greater choice of innovative formulations.
Dr Surinder Chahal, Global Vice President Long Term Innovation for Personal Care at Croda said: “This is a hugely exciting time for us; access to the cutting-edge capability at the MIF will allow us to further enhance our reputation in innovative formulation by adopting high-throughput technologies and computer aided materials science to fully realise the potential of our existing and future products, as well as enabling us to develop new ways to meet consumer needs in fast moving marketplaces.”
Dr Jon Mercer, Programme Manager for the Materials Innovation Factory, said: “We are delighted to welcome Croda International to the Materials Innovation Factory and look forward to their team using our facilities and working alongside our specialists to take forward their specific formulation projects.
“The Materials Innovation Factory offers access to unparalleled technology to one of the highest-concentration of materials science automation robotics in the world as well as expertise in automated materials discovery and it’s great to see industry taking advantage of this. We look forward to welcoming more companies in the future.”
The MIF is a unique 11,0002 ft facility that aims to revolutionise materials chemistry research and development by drawing together world-leading, multi-disciplinary research expertise, unparalleled technical facilities and a dynamic support infrastructure.
It has been supported through a public/private partnership between the University of Liverpool, Unilever, and the Higher Education Funding Council for England, as part of the UK Government’s Research Partnership Investment Fund.
If you are interested in finding out more about the facilities and expertise available at the MIF, please contact Jon Mercer on jon.mercer@liv.ac.uk