Business Weekly - Cambridge, UK

A Cambridge hi-tech consultancy is set to revolutionise the aerosol industry with the launch of a technology that represents one of the most important developments in the popular aerosol can's 80-year history.

TTP is predicting that its innovative, propellant-free electronic aerosol technology, TouchSpray™, will replace traditional aerosol and triggerspray technologies in consumer packaging applications and eventually become the company's most lucrative innovation to date.

Capable of producing electronically controlled sprays and plumes whose droplet size can be customised to the relevant application, TouchSpray eliminates the need for pressurised containers and opens up an enormous scope of possibilities for container designs and materials, such as credit card size vessels capable of delivering powders as well as liquids.

TTP's initial target market will be the potentially huge personal care sector, which has products ranging from deodorants, perfumes and aftershaves to hairsprays and breath fresheners.

Worth hundreds of millions of dollars every year to aerosol manufacturers, this market alone could generate millions for TTP depending on the company's ability to penetrate its target and the number of products it establishes.

TTP is working with at least two internationally based FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) companies, both of which are traditional makers of aerosol can products, to get TouchSpraylicenced products launched with the first items due to appear next year. Further industry penetration could see TouchSpray used on a much wider basis, though that remains some way off according to Sam Hyde of TTP: "Before now there have been no other options to aerosol cans. We believe TouchSpray has the potential to replace aerosols in the longer term. It is potentially the highest volume product in TTP's history and potentially its most lucrative.

"However, it will be about five years time before sales are fully established. In the mid-term we'll continue to concentrate on more niche markets and sectors where TouchSpray adds a lot of value, where improved performance has a direct effect on customers.

"The key markets we are looking at have volumes of billions of units every year and we expect to make 100s of millions of units in those key markets.

"While we only take a few per cent of the hundreds of millions of dollars they generate, it could mean millions to tens of millions for TTP depending on penetration and how many products we establish."

TouchSpray's unique quality is its ability to create a precise and consistent droplet size to produce a spray plume with a flexible format, allowing novel packaging shapes and sizes. The plume is so precisely formed that it has already had a successful roll out in the medical sector where it has been used by German respiratory expert, PARI, as the basis for an electronic nebulizer.

At its core is an ultrasonically vibrating perforated membrane.

Manufactured using a novel laser micro-machining technique developed at TTP to produce an array of precision, micron-sized nozzles, the membrane is incorporated with a low profile piezoelectric actuator, which is driven at ultrasonic frequencies, causing the membrane to vibrate, ejecting millions of precisely sized droplets each second.