In 2018 I was approached by Kidneys for Life in Manchester
as they informed that the recommended “Bottle top” to carry around for Kidney patients with a fistula is a Coke-a-Cola Bottle top. One of the issues was these types of tops are strong hard rigid plastic often with serrated edges due to the twist-break opening mechanism…and I was asked “Surely you can come up with something better”.

I spent a couple of months with Chinese factories developing prototypes, but they failed to grasp the true requirements making the caps too shallow, so they didn’t flex enough and too firm a plastic.

On visiting a promotional gifts supplier exhibition, I met the Managing Director of a UK based plastics company who said, “I can do this”, so we went into design and develop, creating pre-production samples for their practical use to be tested in a dialysis arena. They produced our first bottle
tops for Kidneys for Life, and they were well received.

Over the years, more Kidney Charities and Hospital Renal units have discovered my details, through positive referrals, and I have now supplied over 70,000 items UK wide. The bottle top caps have also made it into national Kidney Care magazines and have helped to explain what to do before receiving quick medical assistance from a fistula bleed.

From my understanding with key charities in the Uk, these items have been placed next to the 285 Dialysis machines in the UK and have been send to contacts around the world for them to help other fistula patients.

Due to the factories and my development ideas, I have decided to provide these items to anyone who would like one, as I believe these “temporary measure” caps may help many of the 3.5 million UK Kidney disease sufferers in the UK.

We have also developed the keyring mechanism to enable quick release of the bottle top caps, and researched and developed experimenting with 4 types of Eco plastic. Due to storage and degradation issues, we have decided in the meantime to stay with TPE recyclable plastic for the foreseeable future. So my goal now is to help people obtain the caps from the UK to around the world.

Being a bottle top these also can function as “anti-spiking” bottle tops and temporary bottle tops for say a picnic etc to keep the wasps away!