Our first step in the fight against waste plastic!

Pictured below is our first pallet of recycled polypropylene plastic, which if it weren’t for all our backers would have likely ended up in landfill. This will now be used to make a product which is designed to last and which helps move towards our goal of a circular business model. Having run some tests on the recycled sheet we are really pleased with the quality and finish and are excited to begin making POTR Pots from it!

Prototypes, prototypes and more prototypes.

In order to deliver the best possible product to you, we have been fine tuning the design of our pots to ensure the different functional elements work in harmony and that the design can be manufactured efficiently at scale. This has lead to subtly tweaking the geometry on the pots using a combination of 3D CAD drawings and 2D layout drawings to create a series of slightly varying prototypes.

We believe we now have a design for both the small and large pots that we are happy with. As a result, yesterday we gave the green light to our manufacturer to construct our final production tools meaning we should receive our first pots within the next two weeks! We will send out a follow up update in the next 1 - 2 weeks showing the optimised design of our final tools.

Production Innovations

Our production process is comprised of two stages. The first and most important stage is the high precision die cutting process which is being carried out by our manufacturing specialists in Bristol. The second process requires the flat net shapes to be pre-creased and folded in the right orientation - this stresses the fold lines in a particular direction and is what allows the pots to hold and “remember” their shape. There isn’t exactly a manufacturing machine that already does this…so we invented one! Say hello to the POTR Press! 

It is effectively a fancy plunger which automatically creases all of the fold lines in the correct direction. A series of these presses are currently being constructed and will be used on our production line. Check out this video of how it works!

Hopefully that has given you a flavour of what we’ve been up in the last few weeks. We are currently on schedule but with lots still to do…full steam ahead! Our next two updates will include detail on our final production tooling design as well as updates on our packaging design.

We hope you are excited to receive your POTR Pots and thanks once again for all of your support so far!

Andrew and Martin