BEST FOOT FORWARD FOR MILSPEED AS PATENT BOX ENABLES FURTHER PRODUCT INVESTMENT

sites in the UK, in Bourton-on-the-Water and Banbury, another in Vietnam with further sales offices in China, Indonesia, India and South Africa.

Developing a new product or process takes time and investment, from the laboratory through to prototype creation, customer testing and acceptance.

Milspeed first became aware of Patent Box (and R&D Tax Relief) through an industry contact.

Ian explained: “Initially, we worked with an external specialist company and then transferred our support for Patent Box and R&D relief to Hazlewoods when they became our auditors.”

Patent Box has enabled Milspeed to invest even further in its research and development.

Milspeed, based at Bourton-on-theWater in Gloucestershire, develops and produces extruded thermoplastic footwear reinforcement materials called box toes and counters designed to reinforce and keep the shape of the shoe.

These are made in the UK and exported to factories that supply the world’s largest shoe brands. Its patent covers the reprocessing of tri-laminate waste plastic materials and turning the waste into new shoe stiffening product.

The difficulty lies in successfully reprocessing the tri-laminate material when each layer of laminate has varying different melting points.

To tackle this, Milspeed successfully developed a range of footwear products based on taking back shoe factory waste and reprocessing it, resulting in zero waste materials and minimal carbon cost.

Developing the right reprocessing methods must be achieved while maintaining the highest performance properties of a tri-laminate material made up of layers of adhesive, thermoplastic resilient film and nonwoven lining.

Cutting of components for shoes will always lead to waste but Milspeed can now reprocess this waste back into the original product. This has resulted in avoiding landfill and reducing the virgin raw materials used. It has been an economic and ecological success as well as providing the company with a competitive edge.

In addition to granting the patent for this process, the development resulted in Milspeed being awarded The Queen's Award for Enterprise for International Trade and consecutive annual awards for ‘Best in Class For Sustainable Innovation’ from one of the world’s top sports footwear brands.

Milspeed was founded in 1987 by Ian Milhench, CEO and David Speed, who retired some years ago. The business now employs 55 people with two manufacturing

Ian added: “Our customers require more cost effective, environmentally friendly and higher performance products across different thicknesses and compositions to meet the demands of new shoe designs. Our component development is targeted at researching and creating new products as well as reducing costs through new raw materials and combinations of recycled ingredients, using different types of waste available on the global plastic waste market.

“The lower rate of corporation tax on profits earned from our patented inventions provides incentive to continue developing new products and processes. We have developed more products, for which we currently have two further patents under consideration using reprocessed and other difficult to recycle waste.

“Patent Box has also encouraged Milspeed’s investment in new manufacturing machinery and people for the process. In recent years, we have acquired new recycling, shredding, washing and drying equipment to support the product made under the company’s patent.

“Ultimately, this is important because our customers like to see us investing in research and development.”