The Manufacturing Summit is a platform to show the government is very keen to promote and support British innovation and technology, as it provides a path to rebuild the UK economy and drive exports along with creating high value jobs. The UK has a phenomenal history of creating stunning inventions and Plessey is working with a number of the UK’s leading university research departments to commercialise some of these inventions.
Barry Dennington, Plessey’s COO, who spoke with the Minister and demonstrated the two technologies to him, added, Both EPIC and MAGIC are genuine, game-changing technologies. EPIC is a completely new kind of sensor that detects changes in electric field potential and it has already won numerous awards around the world. Customers are using it in an incredibly wide range of applications from contactless monitoring of hearts to controlling artificial limbs and from motion detection for TV remotes, games, and security to early warning for earthquakes! MAGIC enables us to slash the costs of LED lighting by being able to use standard, high volume silicon production lines for the first time to speed its uptake, in the drive to cut carbon emissions. Plessey made its name by providing amazing products that nobody else made. You just can’t compete with the giant wafer fabs in Asia on cost, but you can compete on innovation. I am delighted to say that the reborn Plessey is following in that tradition of providing the products of tomorrow.