The team beat competition from 159 entries from other combined university and industry competitors to win the Best Application of Knowledge in this years Knowledge Transfer Partnership Awards.

Cranfield Colours Printing Inks product manager, Angela Brown, the former Bristol University Associate who was attached to Cranfield for two years, developed new testing methods to improve quality. Other joint areas of research included the development of a range of environmentally friendly inks and methods for ink testing that relate more closely to the printing process.

Cranfield Colours Printing Inks managing director Michael Craine said that profits at the Cwmbran-based firm were up and that the US, France, Holland and Australia had opened up as export markets.

As a third-generation small business we needed to innovate and this programme has given us a business strategy that exceeded all expectations, said Craine.

The dean of the UWEs Faculty of Art Paul Gough said: In the course of the collaboration an all but forgotten printing process called collotype has been revived, which may enable digital printers to create reproduction of unrivalled accuracy and colour fidelity.

Knowledge Transfer Partnerships, which had been known as Teaching Company Schemes, are government-supported three-way links between a university, a recent graduate and an SME.

Story by John Davies