Ultramid® shows what it is made of in the rough and tumble of daily routine in the kitchen.

A daily routine: you fill the automatic water kettle with the desired amount of water, you switch it on and wait for the water to boil. What used to be indicated by a whistle back in grandma's days - the unmistakable reminder that the kettle should quickly be removed from the stove to prevent the water from boiling over - is solved more elegantly nowadays: as soon as the water starts to bubble, the kettle switches off automatically. The idea behind this technique originated 25 years ago at the English company STRIX, a manufacturer of control elements for water boiling applications. John Taylor, the company's executive director back then, developed the first kettle control, which was guaranteed to switch off automatically once steam had built up. A lot has changed in the meantime. Today, STRIX, headquartered on the Isle of Man, holds a 70 per cent market share and is the leading producer of control elements and cordless interfaces for water kettles, with the result that well-known companies such as Tefal, Moulinex, Philips, Kenwood, Bosch, Siemens and Braun are among its customers.

Tapping into new markets

This company has recently entered the coffee market as well. Thanks to the new STRIX heat-control system, the traditional Mocha Express coffee maker made by the coffee machine manufacturer Bialetti is now also available in an electric version. As soon as the espresso, café au lait, cappuccino or latte macchiato is ready, the coffee maker switches off automatically. Here, Bialetti's brewing experts and STRIX's development engineers have achieved the feat of retaining the traditional flavour and aroma of the coffee in combination with the advantage of automatic brewing. STRIX has recently started developing electric systems for water filtration as well. STRIX's executive chairman, Eddie Davies, sees great potential for growth in this market as more and more people are clamoring for clean drinking water, particularly in the developing countries.

Material of choice

Control elements and cordless interfaces made by STRIX are used more than a billion times every day in households throughout the world. All of them are made of the plastic Ultramid®, a polyamide manufactured by BASF. Why? Because this plastic has all of the properties that are needed for the rough and tumble of daily routine in the kitchen. It is robust, mechanically very strong, and exhibits outstanding temperature resistance and dimensional stability, features that renders Ultramid® particularly well-suited for hot-water applications. Another plus point is that Ultramid® can be processed without problems - thus design engineers can give free rein to their imagination when it comes to combining intricate design and precision. "Today, BASF is our number-one supplier," explains Paul Snowden, Supply Chain Director at STRIX. "With its know-how in mould-flow techniques , BASF has helped us improve our product design and quality while lowering our costs."