The client pioneered the on-line application of flavouring in the cigarette manufacturing industry. The equipment proved itself as being extremely accurate and reliable and became the industry standard. At this date the product had been in servive for several years and the client thought it was time it had a facelift and so they looked for a designer to work with their own engineers and bring a fresh perspective to their product design process.

The first stage was to appraise the existing unit and use this as a prompt for brainstorming new innovations. These were refined and presented to the client as concept sketches. The key innovation was introducing two smaller heated tanks which would result in faster heating and allow continuous production by eliminating thermal shock via topping up alternate tanks. The next stage was an ergonomic study which led to the innovation of all round grab handles, feed hose storage and a lift out interface unit which allowed the  worker to locate the flavouring unit away from their work space if needed. This latter point was important because liquid flavouring can be applied at almost any stage of the secondary process of cigarette making and the machine had to be suitable for use with a wide range of machines including cigarette makers, filter plug makers and cigarette packers.

The exterior envelope and chassis was developed using 3D CAD in close liaison with the clients engineers as they developed the internal systems. The exterior envelope and chassis was prototyped at a specialist facrication facility and submitted to the client for fitting out and field trials. The client continued with the development as planned by using it own resources.