The success of a new locally-based business has turned out to be child's play.

Elaborately designed king-sized sandcastles have been appearing on Pembrokeshire beaches this season, following the launch of Castle King; a unique sand sculpting kit created and manufactured by a local company.

The simple but highly effective kit was specifically designed by Interactive Play & Development (IPD), of Pembroke Dock, to encourage youngsters to use their imagination and creative skills to sculpt large-scale castles in the sand.

The kit comprises of a sheet of special plastic that can be formed into a cylinder and fastened securely.

Once filled with damp sand, then compressed; the cylinder can be opened and removed to leave a tall tower of sand. This can then be sculpted into many shapes using the special tools included.

IPD is already selling them locally, while carrying out additional market research and testing the kits on families visiting Pembrokeshire beaches.

Steve Holmes, business manager for IPD, said the warm weather over Easter was a bonus, attracting hundreds of holidaymakers to the beaches where the kits had created tremendous interest among children and their parents.

IPD has applied for a patent and is developing a website to sell them online and is signing up a distributor to target a much wider market this summer.

He said: "We wanted to develop something that encouraged parents to sit down with their children and help the youngsters to develop their creative skills and let their imagination run riot.

"You can easily spend hours creating very professional, large scale sculptures with the kit and we are delighted at the initial reaction."

IPD is a spin-off from AC Automation, which specialises in mechanical engineering services predominantly to the water industry. Castle King is just one of several new products they are developing.

The company has just completed a number of highly successful commercial trials for a range of entertaining, interactive donation boxes designed and developed for good causes.

The boxes are highly innovative and designed to stimulate the interest of children while dramatically increasing the level of donations received.

One contains air bubbles within a clear tube of liquid - when a coin is placed in the box, the donator places his or her hands on a special area that measures their pulse. After a few seconds doughnut shaped bubbles are blown through the liquid in time with their heartbeat.

The boxes are not only educational and a fun experience for children but have proved hugely successful. One charity's best performing donation box raised just £1,000 in a year while one of the IPD models generated more than £100 in under two weeks.

Barnardo's still uses the money spinner - a donation box that was developed 30 years ago, while some charities stopped using these donation boxes a number of years ago because of the low yield.

Two children's charities, Barnardo's and Save the Children, took part in the market research trial period to investigate the level of donations from the new interactive boxes and a number of museums are also looking into their feasibility.

The company will analyse the results of recent trials and market research and hope to win orders from charities and organisations in the UK and USA.

Mr Taylor explained that IPD had been established to put something back into society and to develop products that promoted interaction between parents and children.

"We are encouraging staff to come up with bright ideas and have been helped in this new line of business through the Knowledge Transfer Partnership when two graduates from the University of Glamorgan, a product designer and electronics engineer, helped develop these new products and brought new skills to the company.

"They are now employed by us full-time and we hope to create additional jobs when sales take off."

4:51pm Friday 11th May 2007

Kids test-drive new sand sculpture kit

Courtesy of;

Rin Simpson

Western Mail

Apr 21 2007

A gadget created in Wales looks set to transform sandcastle making forever. Rin Simpson took five creative kids to Barry Island's Whitmore Bay beach to see what they made of it.

A SANDY beach without a bucket and spade is like fish without chips, spring without daffodils, Charlotte without Gavin.

Until you discover Castle King and realise there is so much more that can be done with sand if you think outside the bucket, so to speak.

Which is exactly what product developer Chris Starey did when he watched professional sand sculptors at work and wondered what their secret was.

"We looked at these professional sand sculptors and asked ourselves 'how can they do that and I can't?'," he said.

"Obviously they're artists but we thought there must be something else too. So we looked at the process behind it - mostly on Tenby beach - and did a lot of research."

Working in a sandpit in a lab by day and secretly on the beach at night, Chris and his team at Pembroke Dock-based Interactive Play & Development (IPD) came up with the patented material that now forms the basis of Castle King.

The simple blue plastic tube might not look like much to the untrained eye, but the key lies in the material itself, which is designed so as not to stick to sand.

The method is simple - set up the tube, fill it with sand and water, keeping a good layer of water on the top and mix thoroughly. Once it is full and has had five minutes or so to set, the mould can be removed to reveal a strong, hard column of sand that can then be sculpted with the tools provided.

Watching Chris mould and shave arcs and turrets of sand complete with windows and intricately etched brickwork was undoubtedly impressive. But how would our panel of sandcastle building experts - George Caluan, three, Niamh Edwards, three, Aine Ropka, 19 months, Bailee Wheadon, four, and Megan Ganne, two - enjoy it? After an hour of mixing sand and water, attempts at sculpting, and a few joyful tackles which brought everything down again, the general consensus was a thumbs-up for Castle King.

And it wasn't just the kids who thought it was a good idea. Karen Caluan, 39, is a child minder from Canton in Cardiff and mum to one of our testers, George, and eight-year-old Benjamin. She said, "It's much easier to carry one of those (Castle King) than six traditional buckets and spades, and cleaner as well for your car.

"And it's quick - it takes longer sometimes to set up an activity than they actually use it for, but this is something that would be really quick to set up. It's creative, it's physical, they learn early mathematics, and early science. "This age [of the testers] is a bit too young for the sculpture but they love to fill the tube up and older children can actually sculpt and create." Fellow child minder Helen Tobenas, 43, is mum to Charley, 13, and Parys, nine. She said, "My nine-year-old would love it, she loves the artistic side of things and this would be better to her than a bucket. The younger ones just want to knock everything down! "But it was good to see the different ages and how they filled the tube - Bailee found it easier to fill it with his hands rather than use the little tubes. I think my husband would enjoy it too, he's quite creative and he would get involved with the children, he's very hands on."

And indeed IPD have created the kit as much as a way of helping to develop parent-child interaction as for fun.

Mr Starey said, "Our mission, what ties our products together, is that they encourage parents and children to communicate and work together. These are wholesome products, they are not gimmicky, they're good value, a little bit quirky and they can be used time and time again. This is a phenomenally simple product but like a good art set, it's what you do with it that counts."

IPD future in bigger sandcastles

Courtesy of;

Western Mail

Apr 17 2007

A WELSH engineering company is investing in castles made of sand.

Pembroke Dock-based Interactive Play & Development (IPD) - a spin-out company of AC Automation - has created the Castle King sand sculpting kit.

The designers believe the plastic device will allow children and their parents to create spectacular structures.

IPD is already selling Castle King locally and carried out market research and testing on families who visited Pembrokeshire beaches during the Easter holiday.

The company has applied for a patent and is developing a website to sell Castle King online and sign up a distributor to target a much wider market during the summer season.

Steve Holmes, business manager for IPD, described the scale of the potential market. "One beach shop in Tenby sells 45,000 buckets and spades a year. Even if we have a very small percentage of the market, the market is so huge the volumes will be fairly huge.

"We wanted to develop something that encouraged parents to sit down with their children and help the youngsters to develop their creative skills and let their imagination run riot. You can easily spend hours creating very professional, large-scale sculptures with the kit and we are delighted at the initial reaction.

"I've taken my children onto the beach numerous times and three or four hours goes so quickly. It's unbelievable - not only are we helping them with the [construction] but the most important thing is we are helping them use their imagination. Because it's compacted sand you are able to do so much more."

The launch of IPD is a radical venture by AC Automation, which has been trading for approximately 30 years and specialises in mechanical engineering services in the water industry.

Castle King is just one of several new products they are developing. The company also manufactures interactive donation boxes.

By making them as engaging as possible, they aim to stimulate children's interest while increasing the level of donations received.

When a coin is placed in the box, the donor places their hands on a special area that measures their pulse. After a few seconds doughnut-shaped bubbles are blown through the liquid in time with their heartbeat.

A spokesman said, "The boxes are not only educational and a fun experience for children but have proved hugely successful. One charity's best performing donation box raised just £1,000 in a year while one of the IPD models generated over £100 in under two weeks."

Barnardo's and Save the Children recently took part in an initial market research trial and a number of museums are considering installing the invention. The company will be analysing the results of the trials and hope to win orders from charities and organisations in the UK and United States.

IPD had been established to "put something back into society" and to develop products which encourage interaction between children and their parents. "We are encouraging staff to come up with bright ideas," said Mr Taylor.

Support has come through a Knowledge Transfer Partnership scheme with the University of Glamorgan. Two graduates are staff members, a product designer and electronics engineer.

"We hope to create additional jobs when sales take off," Mr Holmes said.

Chris sends pulses racing with charity design

Courtesy of;

Wolverhampton Express and Star, December 22nd 2006

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