ZP is an ISO13485 certified developers and manufacturers of electrochemical biosensors and IVDs.
The substrates we manufacture upon include: silicon wafers, ceramic, PET, glass, card, PCB and paper. At ZP we take a pragmatic view on which substrate we manufacture and chose the material most suitable for the application.
One of the materials that is popular at the moment is paper, and so at ZP we are able to print our designs onto paper as the fabrication onto PET and ceramic is fairly straightforward to translate onto paper. ZP advises that you can go onto paper if there paper itself offers a material property that is useful to the final application, we make this comment as you should not move to paper simply because of a perceived cost saving.
THE COST ARGUMENT FOR PAPER
The argument that paper is the only material that offers low cost products is diminished when you consider that the screen printed hypervalue electrodes from ZP are:
- 99 cents each in packs of 200,
- 50 cents when in packs of 10,000
- 25 cents when in packs of 100,000
- 5 cents in packs of 10,000,000.
This example demonstrates a common point with manufactured goods, which is the higher the production volume the lower the cost. As can be seen from the example above the cost of the SPE can be reduced to 5 cents and below by simply increasing the production volume.
THE FOUR IMPORTANT FACTORS THAT DRIVE COST OF SPE ARE
Below we have listed four factors that can drive the cost of screen printed electrodes/SPE/biosensors, it should be noted that the materials of construction are not listed because materials of construction as an important parameter is outside of the top four parameters when considering what drives cost.
1) QUANTITY - How many screen printed electrodes/biosensors do you require?
2) QUALITY - What is the quality you require?
3) SIZE OF SPE/Biosensor - You can often reduce the cost of a biosensor or screen printed electrode by 75 % by halving the length and width of the design.
4) STANDARD versus CUSTOM DESIGN - Customization is always more expensive, than an off the shelf product. In a customization program you often have a team of R and D engineers and scientists involved and so the cost of their efforts have to recouped through the price of the products and programme.
QUANTITY
Commercial screen printed electrodes and biosensors are often sold at a price that is proportional to the volumes sold. When a product is ordered in the 10s and 100s the manufacture of the product has a high administration cost to ship a relatively small number of items and so many manufacturers and distributers have a pricing accordingly. The ZP hypervalue screen printed electrodes show a price range form 99 cents to 5 cents based on the number of screen printed electrodes required.
QUALITY
A common practice in the manufacture of screen printed electrodes is to manufacture and ship. At ZP we manufacture, we electrochemically test and then we ship. ZP is the only ISPO13458 contract developer and manufacturer of screen printed electrodes that electrochemically tests our screen printed electrodes to ensure that they are electrochemically functional before shipping.
SIZE OF SPE/Biosensor
The simplest way of reducing the cost of many products is to reduce their size in doing so you can often increase the production rate. At ZP we imagine that our clients are truly wanting to get to market and so our standard products such as the hypevalue screen printed electrodes are sized so that they can make sense when produced in sufficient manufacturing volumes. How size can impact price of biosensors and screen printed electrodes can be seen in the adjacent button.
STANDARD VERSUS CUSTOM DESIGN
Customization is always more expensive, than an off the shelf product. In a customization program you often have a team of engineers and scientists involved and so the cost of their efforts have to recouped through the price of the products and programme.