Building Industrial links in Design and Technology

Experience of meeting real designers and seeing real manufacturing is an important strategy for learning in Design and Technology.  The College is currently developing links with several local manufacturers including Bentley, Airbus, Cytech and most recently Tetra Pak. 

D&T Product Design students from GCSE and A level courses recently visited World Class Manufacturers Tetra Pak in Wrexham. The visit was intended to support important theory areas covered in class but turned out to be much more.

Students met senior management, environmental, marketing and production staff and talked about the company’s vision for sustainable packaging production. They also enjoyed a tour of the high speed printing and lamination processes used by Tetra Pak.

The company marketing staff then hosted a design challenge based around a Dragons Den style format where groups of four or five students were given a short amount of time to develop a concept for a new product then had to pitch it to the dragons from major retailers including Sainsbury, Marks and Spencer, Asda and Morrisons. All students really rose to the challenge and as you would expect, their enthusiasm and performance did the College proud.  It was great fun too and we hope to develop the link with Tetra Pak further next year with another visit.

Mr D. Stockley
Design and Technology