Touch Bionics plots Europe sales push

Britney Spears and Will.i.am in the video for Scream and Shout. Picture: Youtube

TOUCH Bionics, the artificial hand maker that supplied a device for rapper Will.i.am’s Scream & Shout music video featuring Britney Spears, is beefing up its senior management as it gears up for a push into Europe.

The Livingston-based life sciences company has hired Caroline Stretton as vice-president of international operations and Conal Harte as European sales director.

Stretton joins from contact lens developer Ocutec, where she was operations director, while Harte moves across from prosthetic breast maker Trulife, where he worked as sales and marketing manager.

Touch Bionics chief executive Ian Stevens said: “I am confident they will make a very positive contribution to growth in markets outside the United States. We have expanded our European team to enable direct sales in France, Germany, Italy, Scandinavia and the UK.”

Meanwhile, Edinburgh-based Synpromics is the only Scottish firm out of a group of nine companies being taken by the UK government on a trade mission to California to promote “synthetic biology” at the SynBioBeta conference.