A MALVERN company which exports state-of-the-art water technology has won a top engineering award for a new product it designed and launched in just eight months.

Pulsar Process Measurement of Enigma Commercial Centre in Sandys Road has won an iDEA (Innovation and Design Excellence) award in the design cycle time reduction category, following work with UK Trade and Investment.

The company designs and manufactures ultrasonic level and flow measurement equipment, mainly for the water industry.

Water companies are required to record how many times they release waste water into the environment. The sewage overflow structures that manage overflows are usually in remote areas without a mains electricity supply and an overflow might not occur for many months.

Pulsar won its iDEA award for developing a battery-powered monitoring unit – called the Blackbox CSO controller – that automatically hibernates, periodically wakes up very quickly to record a measurement and then goes back to ‘sleep’.

If the level of sewage is rising then the device wakes more and more often until it has recorded an overflow and its duration.

Keith Flint, sales and marketing director, said: “We are delighted to win the iDEA award for the Blackbox CSO and are exporting it alongside our full range of equipment.

There has already been a great deal of interest from our international customers.

“We have worked with UK Trade and Investment for about nine years and now export to about 25 countries, including Australia, Germany, Italy and the US.

“We regularly use the overseas market introduction service, which provides us with valuable intelligence on the markets concerned.

“Our international trade adviser Linda Smith has also helped us by providing excellent mentoring, which ultimately led to us finding a distributor in Spain.”

Established in 1997, Pulsar Process Measurement has 36 employees and about 55 per cent of its £5.2 million annual turnover is export business.

Ms Smith, based at the Herefordshire and Worcestershire Chamber of Commerce, said: “This company has excelled at designing and developing products for international markets.

“This award not only recognises their skills base, but also demonstrates their commitment to future overseas sales development.”