Business
Partnership with Morrama
Partnership with Morrama.
About this update from Abingdon Health Plc
[{"type":"text","content":"\n\n\nAbingdon Health plc\n(\"Abingdon Health\" or \"the Company\")\n \nPartnership with Morrama to accelerate the development of sustainable plastic free lateral flow devices\n \nYork, U.K. 7 September 2023: Abingdon Health plc (AIM: ABDX), announces a partnership with leading designer Morrama Ltd (\"Morrama\"), a UK-based certified B-Corp design agency, to accelerate the development of plastic free lateral flow housings.\n \nAs part of the agreement, both Abingdon Health and Morrama will invest in a new company, Eco-Flo Innovations Ltd, that will focus on developing sustainable product design solutions for the lateral flow market. As part of the agreement Morrama will assign the intellectual property and know-how of their novel Eco-Flo material into Eco-Flo Innovations Ltd.\n \nAbingdon Health and Morrama intend to make their first plastic-free, compostable cassette (\"Eco-Flo\") available to customers within the next 12 months. The brand-new plastic free cassette will be manufactured in the UK and will utilise renewable plant fibre moulding technology that reduces CO2 emissions by 80% compared to the equivalent single-use plastic. The initial design will look to offer a straight swap from traditional plastic cassettes, breaking down any barrier for companies looking to reduce the impact of their assays and reduce the plastic use across the full test kit by 62%. In addition, the Eco-Flo Innovations team are already exploring ways to remove or switch out the remaining plastic content in tests as well as other aspects of lateral flow product design such as product packaging.\n \nLateral flow tests use became mainstream during the COVID-19 pandemic and have been vital part of diagnostics for decades, from pregnancy to plant health. In this period there has been limited change to test kit design and materials since their conception, but with the global push to minimise the environmental impact of single-use products, there is a pressing need to implement more environmentally sustainable solutions. It is estimated there are over two billion lateral flow immunoassays manufactured annually and the lateral flow market is set to grow from $43 billion in 2022 to $72bn by 2024. Given the scale of the market and its growth there is an increased need to consider the environmental impact of lateral ...