Applied Polymer Technologies Gateway

APT

The APT Gateway is based on the Athlone Institute of Technology campus. APT is providing polymer technology solutions for companies in the medical, composite, recycling and pharmaceutical sectors.

Expertise

Pilot and production-scale injection moulding, blow moulding, thermoforming, extrusion and compounding lines

Advanced analytical facilities for materials research, testing and troubleshooting

Design, rapid prototyping and micro-moulding capabilities

The APT Gateway applies polymer technologies for Ireland-based companies who use polymer materials – ranging in size from startups and SMEs to multinational companies. The plastics industry in Ireland is worth €2 billion, and comprises of 200 companies with an accumulated 12,000 employees. APT has a core focus on three applied technology areas it aims to transfer to industry: biomedical polymers, polymer recycling and composites. APT is a dedicated resource for the Irish polymer manufacturing industry and regularly provides training and information dissemination, as well as production demonstration days for companies.

Using its suite of characterisation equipment and pilot polymer processing facilities, APT can cover all areas of the production lifecycle. This capacity ranges from concept design and prototype development towards commercial launch of a development product, production optimisation and troubleshooting for existing processes and end of life recycling. Using 3D additive printing, APT can fabricate customised injection mould tooling which, married with its pilot production facilities, can fabricate a limited run of bespoke prototypes.

APT at Athlone

“The APT Gateway is extremely useful to us and located only one hour from our plant – we are planning to utilise the equipment to create several samples for our internal test protocols.”

Darren Nolan – Managing Director, Henkel

Read our case studies