CDT's Light Emitting Polymer technology has been granted Millennium Products status by the Design Council after Prime Minister Tony Blair challenged business to show that Britain is the creative powerhouse of the world.

The news was announced by Nicol Stephen, Scottish Deputy Minister for Enterprise and Lifelong Learning, at the Lighthouse building in Glasgow on 6 September.

CDT is leading the research and commercial development of light emitting polymers (LEP). The company holds fundamental patents in the area that are set to significantly change a wide range of consumer electronic products. CDT announced its commercialisation strategy to bring its LEP technology to market through patent and know-how licensing in the middle of 1996.

To date, the company has secured relationships with DuPont (joint development of flexible substrates for large area displays), Philips (license for low-information content applications), DELTA (license for high information content displays), Seiko-Epson (joint development for high information content displays), Hewlett-Packard (license and joint development programme for small area displays) and Hoechst (license for materials supply).

Mark Gostick, marketing director, CDT said: "CDT is delighted to receive this Millennium Award in recognition of its LEP technology. The award recognises the effort that CDT has made over the last five years to commercialise the technology to a point where manufacturers are set to start incorporating it into consumer products."

Andrew Summers, chief executive of the Design Council said: "We offer our warmest congratulations to Danny Chapchal and his team at CDT for the selection of LEP as a Millennium Product. We sincerely hope LEP will be a big success for the company and we hope that Millennium product status will encourage CDT in further successful innovations."