A group of school entrepreneurs have their sights set on being the next big thing in the world of business.

This years Young Enterprise Programme has a team of six Sixth Form students from Kingsbridge Community College who are hoping their ’Banish Balls’ will be the next must-have item.

The product consists of 500 3mm stainless steel balls which, when vigorously shaken in your drinking flasks, mugs and other containers, will remove the stains and odours and also the sediment from protein shakes.

The balls, which are anti-corrosive and Food Grade, are stored in an attractive stainless steel storage container that boasts a removable top with a stainless steel mesh built into it to allow users to drain the dirty water and balls from the newly cleaned containers.

Morgan Aylett, the group’s maanaging director said: "My family and I were fed up with our fruit infusion water bottles, protein shakers and coffee mugs becoming stained and smelly.

"The traditional methods of cleaning just could not penetrate those areas where re-usable plastic becomes infused with stains and where the sediments from protein shakes gather”.

The team then set out to research whether there was a demand for their product and if so, at what selling price.

Sales director Hollie Rogers set up surveys on Survey Monkey and Google Forms to confirm they had a demand for their potential product.

She said: "We received 134 responses which revealed, among other things, that: 69.4% said that they have a problem cleaning their water bottle or flask and 83.7% said that Banish Balls would be something they would consider buying to get over the problems of cleaning. "So, this survey proved the concept and confirmed that, if we could supply our product for between £7.50 and £10, we should be confident of strong demand."

Operations director Milly Fisher supervised the testing of the prototype Banish Balls and said: "We decided to test how well the product would work on a variety of mugs, flasks and water bottles.

"The results demonstrated clearly that a vigorous shaking process was required to clean the various test containers.

"However, with vigorous shaking came the problem of balls potentially escaping out of the top of the containers so, we had to find a way of controlling this – with the smaller open-top containers we would recommend in the instructions that users put a hand over the top; with the wider open-necked mugs we found that stretching a kitchen glove over the mouth could contain the balls.

"Also, the test pack of balls were contained in a small plastic pot with an inside lid with holes in to drain.

"We found that it was difficult to pour the balls into the stained container without losing some of these balls and just about impossible to pour back into the container to drain after cleaning.

"So, we decided we had to improve the product to overcome these problems.

"We also were trying, as far possible, to make our product sustainable and a plastic pot just wasn’t good enough.”

Describing how the product evolved from the initial tests, design director Angus Fellows said: "To replace the plastic storage pot which the test product came in we experimented with natural fibre drawstring bags made out of Jute, Linen and Cotton.

"Although they were fine for pouring out in the first place and storing the product after use, they weren’t particularly good at filtering the dirty water which remained at the end of cleaning and also they were difficult to pour the balls back into afterwards.

"So, we followed the idea of using a sieve for cleaning and also storage but the small plastic sieve we used for the next stage of testing, although very good for sifting out the sediments and dirty water, needed to have a cap when the balls were stored and we were still looking for a more sustainable material.

"Eventually, after looking at a flour sifter, we hit upon the idea of using a stainless steel sugar/chocolate shaker as used in coffee shops.

"The container was of a size which made pouring in and out easy; it had a stainless steel meshing for the sifting process and, bingo, was made out of a long-lasting, attractive sustainable material.

"One further advantage of this selection was that this was now a dual use product which could be alternatively used for cleaning or indeed as a chocolate shaker for your coffees.”

Company secretary Zoe Squire added: "Our Banish Balls Product was ‘born’ and we then had to raise the share capital to fund the purchase of the parts for assembly – one cost we didn’t have to bear was the printing of our Banish Balls branding which Nick Walker Printing kindly supplied free of charge.

"Also, a big thank you to the Kingsbridge Estuary Rotary Club for fully funding the cost of participating in this year’s YE Programme.”