CARTEN Controls, now based at Unit 613 – in addition to its original manufacturing site at Unit 609 – in the Waterford Industrial Park, Waterford, is a global leader in the design and manufacture of ultra-high purity and high-performance valves.

In high technology industries such as semiconductor – where microchips are manufactured for all our modern needs – and bioprocessing – where new cutting-edge drugs such as COVID19 vaccines are manufactured, it is essential to continuously provide a new product development pipeline to ensure continued success of both a company brand, and the manufacturing site itself.

Development of products for these industries require years to develop and validate and require huge investment in terms of finance – but critically, the human resources required across multiple disciplines and skillsets.

Carten is a globally recognised brand, with a second site at Connecticut in the US. Traditionally the US site has been the larger unit, with the Waterford site originally reporting back to the US. In recent years however, Carten Waterford has overtaken the US site in terms of manufacturing output and new product developments.

Declan Irish, the Carten Waterford site’s managing director, considers this the key to continued and sustainable growth; “In the past, our product designs came from the US site, however in recent years our Waterford site has become self-sufficient in this aspect. This has allowed us to develop into new applications in our core semiconductor markets and develop next generation product lines – where we have patented technologies – for key markets such as bioprocessing.”

Carten Research & Development Laboratory at Unit 609 Industrial Estate Waterford

“We would always look 2-3 years ahead in our core industries and develop solutions we see for next generation applications. These can come from a variety of sources, but predominantly from partnerships with our customers and witnessing first-hand the obstacles they have to overcome. From there, our team will take it away and review how our design space can eliminate these problems at a wider system level”.

What does that mean in plain English? “There are several use cases. We developed one solution in the bioprocessing industry where we reduced our customers drug production downtime by 75% through a modification to our own product. In another case, we will modify our manufacturing application in producing our product to allow our customer to reduce contamination risk when transporting ultra-high purity gases into their chip-manufacturing facility.”

Carten invested heavily in both their R&D laboratory over recent years, and a highly skilled workforce, to enable this product pipeline to develop over recent years. Traditional manufacturing processes have been supplemented with modern techniques such as 3D printing and elastomer injection molding, allowing Carten to develop products for new applications. “We now have over 20 engineers working in conjunction with our manufacturing, marketing, and sales teams. This multifunctional team skillset will keep our Waterford site at the forefront of tech industries, and we will continue to invest in our people throughout 2023 and beyond.”

Please select all the ways you would like to hear from Waterford News & Star:

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. For information about our privacy practices, please visit our website.

We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By clicking below to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy practices here.