Tom Cole picks up a circuit board made on the £500,000 production line installed at the factory of Integrated Technologies Limited less than three months ago.

He points to a tiny grey patch on the shiny green panel, which is used inside an electronically-powered artificial knee the company is developing for one of its 30 clients.

The piece, less than the size of a Tic Tac, is made up of more than 200 parts.

“If you look at the components we used to make, they were the size of a pill,” said chief executive Mr Cole, who has worked at the business on Ashford’s Ellingham industrial estate for 25 years.

“Now we can make parts the size of a speck of dust. This is advanced manufacturing. It’s amazing.”

For the 100 staff at Integrated Technologies Limited, known as ITL, engineering groundbreaking products has become something of a routine.

The double-KEiBA-winning company works with all kinds of clients, from blue-chip companies to nutty professors, taking projects from design and development to prototyping, volume manufacturing and then distribution worldwide.

Typically, it has about 20 projects at the manufacturing stage at any one time, with another 10 in research and development. Turnover has reached £10 million, with plans to boost it by 20% this year through expanding its operations in Virginia and Shanghai.

“The UK is fantastic for innovation,” said Mr Cole. “We are never short of ideas.

“The challenge is turning them into something we can sell into the marketplace. Inventors are not good at that part. That’s the part we are good at.”

In one of the factory booths, system engineer Chris Ramsden is hunched over a laptop working on a powerful microscope for French firm Genomic Vision.

The machine looks for defects in DNA by taking hundreds of pictures, each a fraction of a millimetre in size, and putting them together to build a viewable image. This could indicate a genetic condition and detect diseases like breast, bowel and liver cancer.

“We never do the same thing for too long in this place,” said Mr Ramsden.

“We move from one challenge to another.”

ITL, which was founded as Wilj International in 1977, has benefited from growing political support for development in the sciences.

Mr Cole acknowledges there is “a lot of government money around” for young entrepreneurs and inventors trying to get projects off the ground.

About half their research and development projects are backed by public sector grants.

Universities have become a big source of revenue, with many becoming more commercially orientated in their tuition.

For the first time, the company has sponsored two students from University College London, who they hope will come up with the next big innovations, for which ITL will be given first refusal.

Its unique selling point, however, is its handling of regulatory approval.

It has all the key certification required to launch products in fiercely regulated markets like the US and is used to intense audits by overseas officials.

“Not many people in the UK have that facility for development and manufacturing,” said Mr Cole.

“It is mind-boggling going through the level of detail we have to provide on the design of medical devices. The paperwork is enormous and the validation processes are huge.”

ITL is on the hunt for its next apprentice engineers after putting four young people through training last year.

Chief executive Tom Cole is a veteran of the company’s electronic engineering apprenticeship scheme.

He was a production manager before becoming operations manager, operations director and then leading the group, which also has sites in Virginia and Shanghai.

“I like apprenticeship schemes. We had four apprentices come through it last year and are looking for another two this year.

“You can go to university, but you will rack up a big bill, have no industry experience and you will have to look for a job.

“We still offer a degree on day release, but we pay you to do it and you get experience at the same time.”

ITL gained a huge publicity boost when it became the first-ever double winner at the KEiBAs.

The firm was named best manufacturer and science and technology business of the year at the awards in 2014, run by the county council and the KM Media Group.

“You don’t know how good it is until you’re involved in it,” said chief executive Tom Cole.

"Everything was amazing. It was so well organised and when I came back to the factory with two awards and presented them to the shop floor they were over the moon.

“To get recognition from someone outside who is independent is nice. When the judges came round, some of them were blown away.”

Bedfont Scientific, based in Harrietsham, near Maidstone, has used ITL for several projects.

The two firms are working together on a device that helps small babies who suffer trouble with breathing.

“We have built a good working relationship with ITL while creating two of our most successful product launches to date,” said general manager Jason Smith.

“Our working partnership with them is very much ongoing, with the prospect of more new projects in the future.”

ITL boss Tom Cole said its blossoming relationship with Bedfont was typical of the way many clients came on board.

He said: “We are their manufacturer but have become their research and development partner, too.

“We were purely doing their manufacturing, but then they realised the facility we had in R&D and now we work closely together.

“That usually happens when firms realise what we can do.”

When it comes to working for the big players, however, ITL is often tied by non-disclosure agreements, which means it cannot talk about some of its best work.

“When we have designed stuff for people and then can’t talk about it that can be frustrating,” said marketing manager Carl Lincoln. “But we respect their wishes.”

“We always try to get our name on a product somewhere, even if it’s just a small label on the back,” said Mr Cole.

“I’m not proud as long as we sell as many as we can.”