Sauflon Centre of Innovation

Walking the cavernous halls of Sauflon’s Budapest contact lens facility offers a glimpse of the global scale of the contact lens business. The colossal numbers involved just roll off the tongue of manufacturing director Francis Erard. Sauflon’s cellular approach to manufacturing, two lines per cell, 25 million lenses per line, makes the maths misleadingly simple. Each cell takes between six and seven months to complete, and looks more like a semiconductor chip factory than an optical operation.

The lenses are made by forming a plastic case containing the shape to provide a power into which the SiH monomer is injected. This is then carefully compressed, sealed and cured to form the lens. The contact lens is removed, hydrated, put into the blister pack which is then laser printed and sterilised. Along the way rigorous checking takes place and robot arms whirl daisy wheels of lenses around with micron precision. Rotating bowl feeders chunk away alongside conveyors, hoppers and hydraulics.