Business Masters: Winners prove successful innovation creates strong results
SUCCESSFUL innovation is the lifeblood of any good company and the finalists in this year’s West Midlands Business Masters are prime examples of this ethos.
Taking home the title of Innovator in this year’s awards is Koolmill, a Solihull-based technology company which by working together with carefully chosen partners in China and India, is aiming to change the embedded culture of an entire industry.
This story forms part of our West Midlands Business Masters 2013 Winners supplement. To read more click here.
Koolmill was astonished to find out about the staggeringly high levels of food poverty across the globe. For as many as 3.3bn rice is a stable diet and yet traditional rice milling is both wasteful and power hungry, depriving emerging nations of two vital resources.
In response to the problem, the company has developed a truly innovative milling process, a radical super-efficient displacement technology that will make a positive impact on the lives of many.
The Koolmill technology delivers powers savings of around 80% in the milling process and maximises the return of food as a valuable resource by avoiding wasted rice and power. The low power simpler Koolmill process brings, for the first time, potentially zero emission state of the art milling to all millers regardless of size and location.
Although the process currently takes place in China, Koolmill is anxious to bring the manufacturing operation into the UK.
Alex Anderson, founder and Managing Director, Koolmill said: “We were prompted to develop our process because of the alarming amount of food which is wasted every day and the process we have developed is super-efficient.
“We have a 50:50 joint venture with a Chinese manufacturer but our aim is to get a factory established in the UK and once we have achieved this then we will be able to take the process out to new countries such as Brazil and others in the emerging markets.”
The innovative approach was followed by the two competing finalists in this category.
Coventry-based SafetyFlex Barriers is a company that has been in existence for some time and was manufacturing leaf springs for the automotive industry. However, over time the technology advanced and its customer base diminished.
In order to remain viable it opted to be innovative with its products and by a developmental process the leaf springs gradually evolved into safety barriers.
The product is now so successful that the company has become a leading supplier of anti-terrorist safety barriers around the world.
One of its most visible displays is outside the new Edgbaston Stadium. The barriers there are so effective that a seven and a half tonne truck travelling at up to 50 mph would be stopped dead in its tracks.
Birmingham-based Dunlop Motorsport has successfully trialled innovative new technology which aims to feed back real-time data on a tyre’s performance to motorcycle riders.
An electronic sensor, which underpins the RFID (Radio-Frequency Identification) technology, is being embedded into tyres being used on machines in the world’s leading motorcycle racing championship, MotoGP.
The company, which has already had success with the concept in the British Touring Car Championship and European Truck Racing, has said its future goal is to increase tyres’ intelligence to the point where they are feeding back vital real-time information to the rider.
The Innovator category was sponsored by Chiltern Railways.
