Let’s be partners

For many people, Valentine’s Day on 14 February is a time for celebrating partnerships – and finding a great partner is indeed a cause for celebration.

In business, working with like-minded people to produce just the right solution for a customer is both rewarding and highly productive. So it is with great pleasure that I report Malvern’s new partnership with International Innovative Technologies (IIT), a specialist powder solutions company based in Gateshead, in the north of England.

Introducing IIT

IIT specializes in the design and manufacture of patented low-energy powder milling technology and classification equipment. The company has an extremely well-equipped test facility, and for many years the teams there have used Malvern technology, most notably our Mastersizer laser diffraction instrumentation which delivers their off-line particle size analysis.

Now IIT has made the decision to move to continuous, real-time particle sizing and plans are well advanced for the installation of a Malvern Insitec system.

For IIT, each new client brings a novel processing challenge and very often the goal is to meet a well-defined particle size specification while reducing energy consumption to an absolute minimum. Until now, optimizing a new milling solution has involved changing mill parameters and then evaluating the effects by taking samples and conducting particle size analysis off-line. Once the Insitec is in place, however, IIT will be able to carry out this optimization in real time, as the impact of any change will be immediately obvious. This will have enormous benefits in accelerating and simplifying process development.

The benefits of partnership

Milling is fundamental to so many manufacturing processes across many different industries, and its improved operation is an area in which Malvern’s particle sizing technology has a proven role. We are delighted to be working alongside IIT, and to bring automation and applications expertise to the partnership, supporting the creation and development of smarter, fully automated milling solutions.

Beyond this, one of the most exciting aspects of the partnership is that together we will be able to demonstrate exactly what the technologies of both companies can deliver. As we go forward, the IIT facilities will provide a location for education, demonstrations and trials. There is no doubt that seeing real-time analysis in action is one of the best ways to find out just what it can deliver for you. So let us know your particular area of interest and we’ll keep you updated on relevant developments and opportunities to participate.

For details of all Malvern partnerships visit our Partnership web page.