An award-winning hi-tech firm has claimed its prize of a year’s rent-free accommodation at a science park in Kent.

Purelabs won the Kent Innovation Challenge for developing its first web-based, pay-as-you-go flat planning service for magazine and newspaper publishers.

It saw off competition from rivals to land the £20,000 top prize plus awards in kind - and these included office space at Kent Science Park, Sittingbourne.

Jon Barrett, founder of Purelabs, which is based at Lenham, near Maidstone, said after his triumph in April that the prize money would help him develop the revolutionary idea faster.

The business, which was helped by the University of Kent and Canterbury Enterprise Hub, won the contest after a Dragons Den-style grilling by Kent business experts.

They were impressed by Mr Barrett’s big idea, Intelligent Flatplan, said to be the world’s first internet-based magazine management solution.

Mr Barrett said: “From our new Kent Science Park base we are striking out with more research and product development plus increased sales to publishers, design houses, marketing agencies, typesetters and printers

“Kent Science Park is the right address for a local technology-based company like ours. The site has the all-important Internet infrastructure to help us market our system, deliver the product and support our customers.”

Babs Knott, KSP site administrator, said: “Purelabs arrival will strengthen the Park's community of ICT businesses.”

Since Mr Barrett and his team launched Intelligent Flatplan technology 18 months ago, more than 1,500 publishing professionals around the world have used the system to manage more than 2,200 editions, totalling some 153,000 pages.

They spotted a gap in the market for an IT solution to serve their own publishing business. It plans to increase the number of pages planned to a million a year by 2011.