From outer space to medical research, a Sussex company is playing an important role in precision engineering.

Lamina Dielectics is one of the world's principal suppliers of precision engineered, high-perform-ance spirally-wound tubing, which is used on some of the most exciting research projects.

The Billingshurst-based company has just received an award from CERN, the European Centre for Advanced Particle Physics in Geneva as its best supplier, an accolade that could gen-erate important marketing spin-offs.

Lamina has been supplying its tubing, known as straws, for a particle collision tracker at CERN.

The company was founded in 1970 by Patrick Hester who has since been joined on the board by his son Simon. It has a staff of 45.

For the CERN contract, Lamina manufactured 180,000 straws for the ATLAS Trans-ition Radiation Tracker, a project aimed at recreating the first millionth of the first millionth second of the evolution of the universe.

The straws are 1.66 metres long and just 4mm in dia-meter.

A straw is produced by winding and bonding together two thin strips of film coated with aluminium and graphite on one side and polyurethane on the other.

The main challenge was to obtain a final product complying with stringent mechanical specifications at the end of such a tricky manufacturing process.

Not only did the firm meet this challenge, it even managed to achieve a lower rejection rate than was originally foreseen.

Patrick Hester said: "This is a reward for the hard work of a whole team."

At Billingshurst Lamina designs all its own test equipment and uses only the highest-quality components.

Lamina was first app-roached by CERN to design the straws and, despite developing a successful proto-type, the company lost out in a competitive global tender to a US supplier.

It was awarded the contract when its American com-petitor was unable to cope with the quality demands.

Special machines were designed and located in an ultra-clean production area.

The precision and the quality through-out the run led to the award.

The technology developed for the project has now been sold to research organisations and universities across the world, as well as the International Space Station.

The company is also a supplier to the Ministry of Defence.

During the Gulf War, Lamina had to design and produce 25,000 special ampules containing a two-part antidote to chemical weapons.