ANYONE who has tussled with the tangle of their earphones inside their bag or pocket will welcome a new gadget created by a Cumnock Academy pupil.

An earphone holder is the newest design to come from the team at Cumnock Promotional Gifts (CPG) set up with the help of the firm’s managing director MD Wendy Pring.

To encourage the CPG team at Cumnock Academy with their innovation KCP runs a regular design competition to seek out the best ideas.

This year’s winner was Tamara Leitch who came up with the neat little earphone holder.

KCP’s office manager Lana McCurdy and finance personnel Jacqueline Spence, visited the school last week to hand over the winner’s certificate and take delivery of the giveaways.

Wendy came up with the idea for what was then to be Cumnock Plastics when her daughter Ruby came home with a keyring she had made at school and inspired her into investigating whether more could be made for KCP to use as promotional materials.

The potential of Cumnock Plastics as an educational tool on many levels soon became clear and the school’s faculty of business and technologies picked up the ball and ran with it while KCP were delighted to act as mentors.

They launched out into mug and canvas printing using the profits gleaned over the years to fund the purchase of some state-of-the-art printing equipment and a £7,000 CNC Router to take them into the world of 3D printing.

In working with companies the pupils learn the whole range of manufacturing processes, from design and development, to manufacture, sales and accounting and thereby gain a wide understanding of how business works.

It is perhaps not a surprise that Tom Hunter is a former pupil of Cumnock Academy and he too takes a great interest in the business and technologies faculty, being delighted last year when the Cumnock pupils took second place in the annual Tom Hunter Challenge adding £2,500 to their development funds.