New Product and Material Development

Continuous development of products and materials are vital to enable the Porvair Filtration Group to offer new and better solutions to applications. Typically, between 20% and 30% of annual sales are made with products that are less than three years old, with a significant proportion of the workforce dedicated to product and process development. Development plays a fundamental part in our operations and, as a result, the company has developed a number of new bespoke products based on it’s established porous polymeric materials (known as Vyon^®) and sintered metal fibre media (known as Sinterflo^®).

Porvair manufacture a range of porous materials based on sintered polymers and metals, for a variety of industrial, pharmaceutical and biomedical applications, at a production site in North Wales. It is in these materials that several technological advances have been achieved in recent years. The research and development team have enhanced the companies core knowledge of porous materials and have developed new products and materials that address the more demanding expectations of the higher value markets.

Porvair Filtration Group (Microfiltrex division) is well known in the aerospace and nuclear filtration markets as a supplier of filters and filtration systems for extreme conditions of temperature, pressure and corrosion. This broad range of quality filtration products are extensively tested and validated in order to meet international standards. We also supply our own designed self-cleaning, removable and disposable filter systems for the nuclear industry, and we routinely design and develop these filters from new, in order to keep up with the increasingly demanding needs of these dangerous and demanding environments.

Although Porvair operates across many filtration and separation markets there is significant interaction between each division in terms of product research and development. The new product development team is drawn from scientists and engineers from across all divisions to meet up for monthly peer and management reviews in an environment that encourages new ideas and new solutions. The success of this approach has been in the interaction of chemists and engineers working together to find practical solutions to some extremely complex scientific challenges identified in the chosen market areas.

Broadly speaking the advancement in technology, achieved in recent years by Porvair, can be divided into research and development in three main areas: the development of porous polymers, porous metals and advanced bespoke systems.