Queen's Award for innovative Peterborough manufacturer

Photocentric, of Cambridge House, in Oxney Road, has been named as a winner of the Queen’s Award for Enterprise, with special recognition for its innovative work.

The photopolymer manufacturer, which employs 53 people in the city plus 22 at its US subsidiary, began by creating imagepac - an easy way to make stamps and printing plates with photopolymer, to being the first to use unmodified LCD screens and daylight curing photopolymer to produce affordable 3D printers.

Managing director Paul Holt said: “We are delighted to win the Queen’s Award. Innovation is in Photocentric’s DNA.

“The award today is a recognition of our company philosophy and will inspire us to continue to think differently and change markets.

“New concepts are created in the business regularly. It’s never possible to know when or why something new will happen, but the ideas have kept on coming throughout the first 10 years and there is no reason to think that the rate of creation won’t increase in the next 10.”

“The ideas have kept coming and we now have five patents pending on our daylight activated polymer technology, together with an incredible pipeline of exciting new products for the 3D Printing market.

He added: “I like that we can do things differently.

“I love that we can upset apple-carts of accepted thought with new ways of doing things.”