Public Funding for Calla Lily Personal Care Ltd

Callaly is a UK company that has developed and now produces a new type of feminine hygiene product, invented by a gynaecologist, that is a "hybrid" tampon and pantyliner. The innovative product, called a Tampliner, combines the best features of both products and specifically relies on a patented innovative thin "sleeve" that enables the tampon to be hygienically used and disposed of. Callaly is the recipient of Innovate UK grant funding to research and develop the Tampliner design and production process. Callaly established UK based manufacturing of the Tampliner last year. The business sells the products directly to women and all people with periods over the internet. Customers pay a monthly subscription fee, then can select their own personal choice of product (i.e. flow rate, Tampliners, pads or tampons) and their order is mailed to them every month. This approach has proven to be very popular with customers, at present the team has a growing subscriber/consumer base of over 6,000 subscribers. The current manufacturing process is a mix of semi auto assembly and manual packaging which were designed and implemented to prove the product market fit which Callaly has successfully done since launch. In order to achieve a step change in the optimisation of the manufacturing process there is a requirement to develop and implement a fully automated production and packaging process that will drastically reduce the labour cost (88%) enabling Callaly to command a very competitive position in the period care market. Callaly is seeking a loan to invest in the development of an advanced fully automated Tampliner manufacturing and packaging process in collaboration with world leading British bespoke automation developers. The new system will make use of high-tech assembly and vision guided robotic processes while also revolutionising the way manufacturing supply chain reacts to online customer orders by developing industry 4.0 capabilities in the new systems. This investment will also have the added benefit of removing the need for a layer of plastic packaging and reducing the total amount of packaging waste.

Callaly is a UK based developer and manufacturer of a highly innovative menstrual period care product, invented by a gynaecologist, that is a "hybrid" tampon and pantyliner. The innovative product, called a Tampliner, combines the best features of both products and specifically relies on a patented innovative impermeable sheath that enables the tampon to be hygienically inserted without contact with menstrual blood. Callaly established UK based Tampliner production in late-2019 and created a novel direct-to-consumer sales and postal distribution model. Women can manage and customise their personal requirements from a suite of Callaly products (comprising Tampliners and conventional period products). The product and business has proven to be popular and at present the team has a growing subscriber/consumer base of over 5,000 subscribers providing over 50,000 products a month. Callaly has a commercial ethos that is strongly influenced by ecological principles, and the team aspires to develop the novel & innovative Tampliner to the highest sustainability standards. All of the Tampliner parts with the exception of one item are biodegradable. This item is the heart of the innovative Tampliner: a cylindrical sheath component membrane that secures the tampon to the pantyliner component of the Tampliner. This sheath is made from a non sustainable polymer. During the early stages of product development, Callaly was advised that a biopolymer alternative would have to be specially developed for the Tampliner. The disruption of the Covid-19 pandemic and the increased consumer sensitivity to sustainability has now emphasised the need for Callaly to address this development challenge to the business. Callaly is seeking Innovate UK investment funding to investigate a number of possible biodegradable polymers and most importantly to test them to see if they can be used in place of the existing conventional plastic part. The enclosed project enables Callaly to collaborate with experts in sustainable plastics---Imperial College London and Aquapak (industrial producer of biodegradable plastic).

Application presented by a British company that is focused on the development of new production machinery needed to produce an innovative new femcare product. The new innovation has been created by a gynaecologist that wishes to create a hybrid tampon and pantyliner combination that provides women with a step change in comfort and hygiene. The main idea behind this new invention is a very thin elastomeric membrane that links a tampon to the pantyliner. The device enables the tampon to be inserted and removed with minimal risk of exposure to menstrual fluid. The novel tampon has been used by thousands of women and provides improved protection from leakage, is more comfortable and has improved levels of hygiene. Fusing the best features of pantyliners and tampons the applicants are focused on a target $148mn in annual revenue by year 7 representing 0.5% of the $30bn annual global market. The applicant had developed and sells the new tampon that have been produced on a semi-manual process with cost-prohibitive production unit price. The business is developing new production machinery outside the scope of this application to resolve this issue. An unforeseen consequence of the Tampliner design is the routing and handling of the tampon component withdrawal string through the manufacturing process. This project seeks to conduct R&D to address a specific handling challenge when the Tampliner is at the end of the process and needs to be wrapped in environmentally friendly / sustainable wrapping materials. The flexible and unconstrained nature of the string means that at present Tampliners can only be wrapped by humans which is commercially unsustainable. The enclosed research project is required to enable the team to experiment with robotic systems, grippers, air flow, materials and wrapping equipment/process to resolve this challenge and ensure the team has a route to an automated wrapping process. The success of this project will be demonstrated by the successful and highly reproducible constraint of the string, folding and wrapping of the Tampliner in biodegradable packaging in well under 5 seconds per item.

New high speed production process development for a game-changing femcare product

The design of feminine hygiene products has remained unchanged for many decades; Callaly is a new innovation that will change this situation. A leading gynaecologist in our team has created a novel, patent protected “hybrid” tampon and sanitary pad combination that provides women with a step change in comfort and hygiene. The product fuses the best features of pantyliners and tampons combining them into a product that is inherently more hygienic during use. To-date our team has developed our “hybrid” tampon on a manual basis in addition to conducting initial favourable user trials and taking substantial steps to project the concept IP. Our challenge now, and the subject of our current project, is to translate our current handmade design into a format that is suitable for mass manufacturing. To make this transition we face the following research & development challenges: 1 – Material selection of key components that enhance the function of the hybrid tampon; 2 – Design for manufacture study on the current device to ensure volume production is feasible and economic; 3 – production of a limited number of prototype hybrid tampons to enable confirmatory trials to be conducted.