Haydale, Dowton pen deal over new screen printable ink

Haydale Graphene Industries was looking at a sizeable new market on Thursday, announcing a fresh agreement with Dowton Electronic Materials Company for the development, production, sales and marketing of a Haydale-branded graphene-enhanced screen printable ink aimed at the biomedical market.

The AIM-traded company had worked with Dowton already to create a range of graphene-enhanced screen printable inks and pastes that could be rapidly altered to suit customer needs.

Under the agreement, Haydale would retain the exclusive rights to sell the developed inks in Europe, the Americas, Korea and South East Asia, while Dowton would receive the exclusive rights to sell them in its home market of Taiwan and also market the ink to existing customers in Japan and other territories.

Dowton was said to have existing customer demand for conductive inks incorporating both carbon and metals such as palladium, silver copper and nickel, and would continue to sell existing products under its own Dowton brand.

The agreement was for an initial term of five years with automatic renewal, subject to a six month termination clause thereafter.

Production quantities for commercial applications were anticipated in 2016, with leads already under evaluation.

"Working with Dowton has been enlightening in that they get things completed quickly with minimum fuss,” said Haydale CEO Ray Gibbs.

“Their technical expertise is outstanding along with production facilities and equipment. They have helped us to quickly produce an excellent base conductive ink - or as they describe it a paste - that has been built on our existing product.”

Gibbs said the developed paste was specifically designed for the screen printing of biomedical sensors, which remained a substantial market - especially in the Far East.

“Even after 15 years of industry experience Dowton has expressed to us how surprised they were with the superior performance of our graphene based paste and have stated they have customers ready to trial the product. We therefore anticipate revenues from this agreement during 2016,” Gibbs commented.

Dowton CEO Hsu Shen-An said working with Haydale had been “surprisingly easy,” with the quality of the graphene pastes some of the best performing the company had seen for conductivity and stability of performance - crucial for repeat sales.

“We are very excited by Haydale's graphene paste and have expectations of strong interest from our existing customer in the biomedical sensor market."

At 1630 BST, shares in Haydale were trading up 2.47% at 167.5p.