British contact lens maker Sauflon has bolstered its ambitions to become the world’s third biggest contact lens maker by 2018 with an invitation to practitioners to visit its newly opened Centre of Innovation next to its Hungarian manufacturing plant.
The million pound minimalist white building was designed by renowned Hungarian architect László Földes to echo Sauflon’s values and act as a support centre for customers.
Practitioners have been invited to use the centre’s interactive consulting rooms, training areas and lecture theatre for practice meetings and see how contact lenses are manufactured at the same time.
Joint managing director Bradley Wells said the plant currently made 300 million contact lenses a year with the ability to increase that to one billion in the current building.
‘This isn’t somewhere where we study diseases never seen in practice, this is somewhere where we teach people real things that they are likely to encounter in practice,’ he said.
At the official opening of the centre Professor Nathan Efron gave a talk on ‘the miracle’ of daily disposable lenses and praised Sauflon’s rapid expansion and commitment to the daily modality.
‘It’s the obvious future for contact lenses that they will become daily disposable. If you want to know what the contact lens world will look like in 10 years look at Sauflon,’ he said.
? A full report will be published in Optician soon.