The new contract will see Design LED’s unique embedded LEDs (light emitting diode) illuminating and animating The Famous Grouse brand in bars across Europe and as far as Russia.

Stephen Lawrie, Sales Director, Beaumont PPS said: “Choosing the right partner to design and create a leading edge technology-based product for the highly competitive point of sale market is crucial as trends rapidly drive towards ever more sophisticated solutions. Design LED are at the top of their field and this flagship project has delivered impressive results.”

In the UK alone there are 100,000 licensed premises with at least 1,000,000 bar taps. An estimated 50% of these are illuminated.

Chris Hendry, Category Purchasing Manager of Edrington Group said: "Design LED's light guide provides eye catching animation at the point of sale, helping to enhance and promote The Famous Grouse brand.”

This is the first major commercial roll out of Design LED’s technology in the point of sale market, and marks the company’s drive to enable a new generation of products that are displacing less advanced competitor products.

The young Scottish company has developed a cost-effective, scaleable, flexible animated technology that unlike conventional backlights that illuminate a whole area, allows independent control of segmented areas, and has a wider more intensive colour spectrum.

Iain Kyle, Design LED’s Business Manager said: “Our products can be described simply as intelligent flat light bulbs. Our real business advantage lies in our ability to manufacture solutions that are better, brighter and longer lasting that any competitor product or alternative currently available.”

With 50 billion LEDs being sold worldwide every year, Design LED has plans to first capitalise on early adopter demand for aesthetic solutions while exploring development opportunities for their ‘interactive’ switch based technologies with cross-sectoral original equipment manufacturers (OEM).

Design LED received £250,000 in venture capital funding from Braveheart Ventures in April 2006, and the company plans to develop sales in both point of sale and multiple OEM markets. The company has developed a range of light guide technology solutions for markets including consumer electronics, automotive, medical and industrial products.

Design LED has received business guidance and product development support from the Innovation Advisory support team at Hillington Park Innovation Centre since January 2004.

Brendan Waters, Senior Innovation Manager, Hillington Park Innovation Centre said: “Design LED Products is an exciting company that has created a unique technology with applications in a wide variety of markets. The contract with Beaumont PPS is a significant milestone in the company's development, where they have demonstrated their ability to win business with major global brands.”

The development of Design LED’s brand enhancement product was also supported by a Small Company Innovation Scheme (SCIS) grant from Renfrewshire Scottish Enterprise.