At the presentation of awards for the best regional innovations, conferred by the Northern Primorska Chamber of Commerce and Industry every year, our innovators were again among the best. The gold and silver awards were received by the employees of the Hidria Industrial Automation Competence Centre.

Our innovators earned the SILVER AWARD for the development of an advanced and quick system for handling blisters. With this product, our Industrial Automation Competence Centre (hereinafter: IACC) has made an even stronger appearance in the area of complex manufacturing processes in Industry 4.0, requiring an efficient traceability of components.

Owing to the increasingly demanding conditions in modern manufacturing (traceability, clean spaces), we have also noticed a growing demand for palletisers. By means of a robot, the latter enable simple filling and emptying of pallets. A problem noticed with the competitors is a reduced frequency, i.e. slowdown, of the machine when the pallet is changed. Here, Hidria developed a unique and efficient solution.

Our innovation is based on the use of a line manipulator and the principle of pallet switching taken from the toy industry. Hidria’s alternative palletiser model achieves – as the only one on the market – a high and constant operating speed in the interval of two seconds, and presents many configuration options for the user. Because of the uniqueness of the solution, Hidria protected the innovation by a patent.

Hidria was simultaneously the key part of the team which, together with the company TIK Kobarid, developed the product and technology for their new hydrophilic coated urinary catheter with a water sachet – an innovation receiving the GOLD AWARD and the opportunity to be presented at the national level. Our development team from IACC created the entire automated high-technology production line for this medical devices manufacturer from Kobarid.

With the aid of Hidria, TIK launched a unique catheter, protected under the trademark greencath®, on the European market. It has many advantages over the competition and, in particular, provides an excellent sliding capacity of the catheter with an extended time of coating drying out (10 minutes). The product makes it easier for physically challenged persons to use the catheter because of its innovative shape of the tip and packaging. Its form diminishes damage to the mucous membrane, and the added water sachet enables aseptic activation of the hydrophilic coating and thus a considerably greater autonomy of the user.

The key to the achievement of all the described characteristics of the product is the new manufacturing technology. Hidria’s innovators and development engineers developed for TIK a unique two-phase technology of wetting and meshing , and for producing polished edges of drainage holes. All this is carried out on the new line for catheter wetting, which Hidria set up in the Kobarid company.

The product is highly significant for the future of TIK, as the company invested almost EUR 2 million in this project. At the same time, the setting up of such demanding line in a clean environment in accordance with the international criterion ISO 14644-4 for achieving ISO 8 level of cleanliness is an extraordinary reference in the medical devices industry for the Hidria Industrial Automation Competence Centre.