Horners’ award has designs on UK plastic innovation

The competition for The Worshipful Company of Horners’ Award for Plastics Design and Innovation 2013, as well as the Bottlemakers Award 2013, is now open.

The Horners' Award for Plastics Innovation and Design encourages excellence in UK expertise. Entries must be polymer-based products that will be judged on their design innovation, commercial potential, environmental advantage and UK content. The scope of the award also includes polymer related machines or processes. As a further encouragement to UK entrepreneurship, entries must have a proven record of recent commercial success.

“The Horners’ Award is a prestigious accolade with a number of valuable commercial benefits attached. Last year we again saw a record number of entrants all demonstrating high levels of innovation and exemplary creativity in design. The calibre of entrants year-after-year demonstrates its uniqueness and how vital it is to promote all that design in plastics stands for,” said Keith Pinker, the Master of The Horners Company.

Entries for the Bottlemakers Award must be a plastic bottle, jar or hollow container, with a closure made by any process, including extrusion blow, injection blow or injection stretch blow moulding and rotational moulding. Entries can also be made by the injection moulding and vacuum forming processes.

Previous winners of the design award include the ‘Birthing Baby’ in 2012, an innovative device used for midwifery training in the medical industry; the ‘Cycloc’, a space-saving bicycle storage system and the ‘Durakerb’ lightweight kerbing system, which won a contract to supply the London 2012 Olympics. Past winners of the Bottlemakers award include the ‘Ecostacker’, a unique anti-glug container.

Entries for both awards must be received by the deadline of 27th July 2013.