Innovation

Supporting the innovators

Innovation at Robinson Brothers embraces not just technical progress but a culture of change that includes people, organisation and business process too.

Over 10% of our people are in the R&D Department, an investment of more than 5% of our revenues. This is in addition to on-going capital for facilities. We take processes seamlessly from milligram to multi-tonne in an ISO9000:2000 environment. Sustainable chemistry is core to both new product and processes and process improvement programmes.

External work with Academe, either singly or via industrial consortia, focuses on new processes, process intensification and cleaner chemistry. We are also actively involved in developing sustainable products in the fields of biodegradation and polymer chemicals.

We will continue to be innovative in providing extra added value to the innovative companies we support

New technologies

We are involved in a wide range of projects and collaborations with the aim of bringing the very latest technology to the industry. Here are just a few examples:

• Continuous Hydrogenation - continuous processing conditions providing high throughput, consistency quality output, low energy and low maintenance
• Spinning Disc Reactor systems - technology with the objective of running large scale processes on small scale equipment. Further information on SDR technology is available on the website of University of Newcastle upon Tyne
• Ultrasound - the use of ultrasonic technology to improve efficiency of catalytic processes, especially hydrogenation
• Biodegradable polymers - sustainable technology for packaging systems
• Chiral catalysis and enzymes - use of chiral reagents and catalysts to provide efficient routes to asymmetric molecules