MEDICAL DEVICES FROM THE 3D-PRINTER.

A year ago, we spoke to Maikel Tenniglo of Jemm’s Group. At the time, he was still in the middle of Innovate GO with MatX: a raw material that can be used to print medical devices with 3D printers. How about Maikel and his innovation now?

Research pays off

“Our products will be on the market in a few months,” Maikel told us last time. Were they? “Yes and no,”, Maikel says with a laugh. “A lot has happened in the past year. The biggest change is that our materials are now truly ready. But we still haven’t officially launched MatX. Requests started pouring in before we could resolutely launch our innovation on the market. This shows that all the research we’ve conducted is actually bearing fruit. The first year of MatX is everything we hoped for, but never expected.”

Cut flowers that stay fresh for longer

Not all requests were limited to the applications of medical devices, that Jemm’s Group had already devised for their filament. “The more companies became involved, the more applications entered the picture,” says Maikel. “We get a lot of requests from the health care sector, because the antibacterial properties of our innovation offer many possibilities in that field. The question now is whether the filament can also be applied in the mouth of the patient.” And they also keep coming up with applications themselves. “For example, I was curious whether cut flowers also stay fresh longer in a vase made of our material. So, we tested it out. Whereas flowers in a normal vase lasted 9 days, they lasted 3 weeks in our vase. That offers great opportunities for flower transport, for example. And those are fun things for us to do.”

Don’t grow too fast

Jemm’s Group, therefore, has plenty of growth opportunities to choose from. “Previously, the question that haunted us was: ‘Will it work?’ Now, we ask ourselves: ‘Can we fulfill all requests?’ And that’s quite difficult at times. We have to be careful not to move too fast. But we have experience, we have the right people on our team and new people are joining. This offers scope to open the marketing tap next year and officially launch MatX. I’m really looking forward to that.”

More knowledge and quality

So, it has been an eventful year for Jemm’s Group. “Absolutely. Before we started Innovate GO, we thought we were almost ready to enter the market. But it’s only now starting to get serious. The program hasn’t accelerated our innovation, but it did prevent us from not messing it all up. Our MVP just wasn’t there yet. The Innovate GO program has given us so much more knowledge and quality. I’m extremely grateful for that. Now we can truly say: our product is ready. Time to really shine!”