Cambridge Display Technology Ltd has been promising great things in the development of Light-Emitting Polymer displays for several years now. It signed former IBM UK Ltd business Xyratex Ltd to take its patented technology as a replacement for cathode ray tubes in televisions and personal computers in March (CI No 2,882), and has now entered an aggressive stage to recruit corporate partners to market the technology, said business development manager Mark Gostick. Ordinarily, this would mean finding partners with established marketing and distribution links in a similar line of business, but breaking into the Japanese market requires rather a more cunning technique. Chief executive Danny Chapchal had long-standing links with the newly amalgamated Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi Ltd, which in its present form was created only on April 1 1996 with the merger of the Bank of Tokyo and Mitsubishi Bank, to become Japan’s number one bank – and the world’s largest if measured by total assets, and so initiated talks. Gostick said that the fact that Cambridge had partnered with a bank was immaterial. What mattered, he said, was the personal introductions that would open up to it throughout the Japanese business world. The bank has agreed to circulate details of Cambridge and its Light- Emitting Polymer technology. If talks become serious, the Cambridge team will be on the first plane to Japan, safe in the knowledge that a personal introduction awaits its arrival. The firm estimates it will have a product ready for market by th e end of 1997, but said that it expects to make a flurry of announcements before then.
