‘No waste’ Anyway invention prepares to hit world markets

28 October 2009




A trigger spray system designed to work when held at any angle and leave behind no waste looks poised to hit worldwide markets in household, DIY and personal care products.

British inventor Michael Pritchard developed Anyway as an alternative to conventional aerosols and trigger sprays. A top European packaging manufacturer and major brand owner are in separate discussions to launch Anyway, Mr Pritchard tells Joanne Hunter of Packaging Today. “It won’t be long before we sign a big deal with one, or several, of the key players,” he says.

Anyway is designed to work at any angle and extract ‘every last drop’. The key component is a single hydrophilic membrane tube with millions of holes that attracts liquid and excludes gases. The tube is closed at one end and enters the manifold of a trigger spray at the other. The pressure differential forces the liquid up and out of the tube.

Existing spray technologies tend to create waste because product is left behind and inaccessible in the container due to loss of pressure. “Manufacturers have been trying to solve this problem for years,” says Mr Pritchard.

With Anyway, a product manufacturer can choose the porosity and add characteristics to the tube depending on the nature and viscosity of the contents. The system can handle lotions, gels and foams. It is suitable for most household cleaning products and liquids and ‘a vast majority of beauty products’, its inventor claims.

Mr Pritchard recently secured funding worth £125,000 to license the intellectual property and protect Anyway as he takes the concept to a worldwide market. In the public arena of UK television show Dragons’ Den, two active investors, Peter Jones and Theo Paphitis, each gained a 10% stake in a business Mr Pritchard has been self-funding.

London, UK, based chartered patent attorney Peter Finnie, partner at Gill Jennings & Every, has written a patent application for Anyway that is ‘bomb-proof', according to the inventor.

Anyway is targeting a huge market - some 12 billion sprays and aerosols are in use worldwide with 1.2 billion in the UK alone. “Consumers will drive a change to the new design,” believes Mr Pritchard.

The Anyway spray spun out from a patented conceptthe inventor used first in a bottle system for treating ‘found’ water such as river water, to make it safe for people to drink.

The Lifesaver bottle launched in 2007 is a hand-held self-contained system for filtering water and an undisclosed but ‘pleasing’ number of units now being manufactured under contract in Newcastle follows its first showing in 2006.

A plastics container is fitted with a built-in pump and extruded polymer hydrophilic fibres with the porosity to remove the smallest bacteria, virus and ‘nasties’ down to a particle size of 15nm. Just a few pumps will render even the filthiest water safe and pleasant to drink, its inventor claims.

Mr Pritchard has modified his patented concept in a 20 litre jerry can. He showcased it at Europe’s largest defence procurement event held in London in September, among nearly 1,400 exhibitors from 40 countries. These jerry cans are suitable to be put on vehicles for forward operating bases, and potentially extend the range of a soldier, he says.

He displayed the individual 1 litre bottle at the same event two years ago. Since then, around 4,000 Lifesaver units have been field-tested and passed muster by the British Army in Afghanistan and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

With the individual Lifesaver bottle, Mr Pritchard wants to reach people in need in disaster zones and poorer populations. For this to happen the price needs to drop to around £30, whereas it can now be bought for around £100, he says.


Michael Pritchard Michael Pritchard Anyway spray: a ‘no-waste’ trigger spray system designed to work at any angle Anyway

Anyway Anyway
Michael Pritchard Michael Pritchard


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