Business Weekly - Cambridge, UK

In the early 1980s a number of Russian research scientists worked on the development of a metal surface treatment with exceptional properties on light alloys.

This led to the development of the Plasma Electrolytic Oxidation (PEO) process, which was further refined by Dr Alexander Shatrov and Dr Victor Samsonov.

Working separately, they developed forms of PEO which differed in terms of electrical regime and electrochemistry used but gave light metals a super hard, wear resistant surface.

At the beginning of the 1990s a private company was formed in Moscow to further develop the technology and patent it inter-nationally.

Steps were taken to commercialise the developed technology.

In 1998 a company was set up in the UK and the intellectual property relating to PEO technology was assigned to it. Both the technology and the coating were given the trade name KERONITE.

The developers relocated to the UK to scale up the process from a laboratory to a pilot plant facility and to support the commercial evaluation of the technology.

This work was managed and funded by a technology incubator company.

Following the successful evaluation of the KERONITE technology, seedcorn funding was raised to set up KERONITE Ltd at TWI’s complex in Abington near Cambridge in May 2000, followed by a first round of funding bringing together members of the team from Russia and the UK. Dr Samsonov recently joined the company.

The process has applications across a wide range of industries including automotive, aerospace, textile and electronics to name a few.

KERONITE Ltd has been launched to continue the development and commercialis-ation of the process, with its main business focused on selling commercial treatment licenses.