Businesses Based on Graphene – the United Kingdom Experience

Since the discovery of graphene in 2003/2004 at England’s University of Manchester and the awarding of a Nobel Prize in 2010 to the researchers making that discovery, the British government has allocated significant funding to research in hopes of developing businesses based on graphene. 

Unfortunately, little business has evolved in the UK based on graphene.  A few companies have concentrated on graphene production (e.g., Applied Graphene Materials and Thomas Swan) and apparently been successful in their efforts, but demand for graphene seems to be underwhelming for the production capacity obtained.  

This insufficient demand would be based on a lack of products needing graphene.  A few products have been developed by British companies (e.g., Haydale’s graphene face masks, graphene-enhanced carbon fiber prepregs, and printing inks with graphene and Graphene Composites’ armor shields) but demand for these products seem much less than the available supply. 

So it seems to me that the supply/demand equation is preventing robust businesses that the British government was hoping for.  This is unlikely to change until a market disruptive application (with sufficient graphene demand) is found.  Graphene is unanimously viewed as  a material with awesome properties, but I do not think this is enough for disrupting markets until an application can be found that is commercially disruptive.