Date: March 2008

BRABANTIA AWARDS UNIVERSITY STUDENTS FOR ‘KITCHEN BIN OF THE FUTURE’ DESIGN

Three students at the University of the West of England (UWE) are celebrating after winning the Brabantia Design Award - a competition devised to find the ‘kitchen bin of the future.’

The winning team members, Oliver Bowen, Darrel Meason and Sebastien Chung, are all third year students on the university’s Product Design programme.  As part of their prize the winning team will visit Brabantia’s factory and new product development centre in The Netherlands.

Brabantia sales director, David Slater said, “Product design is very important to us as we continually strive to combine functionality, durability and style.  We were extremely impressed with the designs the students presented and the depth to which they had researched the kitchen waste market.  They really got to the core of some of the issues, developed an excellent solution to meet real consumer needs, and achieved a very high standard of product design.”

All the students had their work reviewed halfway through the design process by Brabantia’s waste category manager David Cornelis, who offered guidance to help them develop their ideas further.  The final presentations were reviewed by Brabantia brand manager, Bart van Elderen.
 
UWE programme director, Tod Burton said, “This has been a very successful project and our students have had first hand experience of presenting professionally to the managers of a well established brand.  All the students have benefited, and the winners will get a deeper insight into new product development and manufacturing when they visit the factory.”

42 final year students on the Product Design programme started the project in November, and looked at all aspects of waste management, from how the kitchen bin has evolved to new technologies, and environmental aspects relating to recycling household rubbish.

Brabantia is one of the top three housewares brands in Europe, and has its UK head office, manufacturing and logistics facility at Nailsea, west of Bristol.  The company also has factories in Holland, Belgium, Germany and China.

The University of the West of England (UWE) is a modern, growing university with over 28,500 students and 3,000 staff. UWE has four campuses in and around Bristol and offers more than 600 programmes at undergraduate, postgraduate, professional and short course levels. UWE has a history of providing high-quality education and training to students, achieving consistently high assessment scores for teaching quality.

-  ends  -

Note to editors

• To obtain this press release and any accompanying image via the Internet, please visit the LawsonClarke PR on-line press centre at: www.lawsonclarke.com