AN innovative designer and manufacturer of health and wellness equipment in Huntingdonshire has seen its export business turnover double in 12 months.

Now, on the back of their initial success, and with intensive support from UK Trade & Investment (UKTI), Kimbolton-based ActivInsights is on course to continue its meteoric rise, with a projected growth potential of a multi-million dollars within just three years.

Managing director Richard Thomas first contacted UKTI in August 2010 equipped with a patented prototype product – the GENEActiv – which he wanted to commercialise. It joined the Passport to Export programme, and overseas success started from there.

Mr Thomas explained: “The assistance of UKTI has played a crucial part in the success of Activinsights achieving export sales of GeneActiv devices to customers in 15 countries in our first year of launch.

“The UKTI Passport programme helped focus our sales strategy for exporting as well as providing us with information and some funding to help us attend some trade shows abroad.”

Activinsights was created in 2008 with the aim of becoming the leading specialist in the science of behavioural change to benefit of people’s overall health. As a fledgling firm working with leading academics, it was able to develop a prototype.

The company’s first product was in the field of oral care and helped monitor oral hygiene habits. Next to follow was the revolutionary GENEActiv – a device worn on the body that records information both on physical activity undertaken by a person in his or her environment up to 100 times a second for a whole week.

The data are interpreted by software to provide information about sleep, activity levels, calories burned, posture activity type etc.

“This technology has major implications for the research community interested in having a greater understanding on how physical behaviour relates to health,” UKTI said. “It also has applications across a wide spectrum of beneficiaries, including individuals and health practitioners.”