Labcold – serving science for 85 years

Did you know that Labcold has been ‘serving science’ since 1932 and that in December 2017 we were 85 years old?

We started life as the Boro Dairy Laboratories & Appliance Company Ltd which tested milk for small dairies in London. World War 2 not only meant the introduction of the National Milk testing Service, which provided free testing, but also bombing. This caused the company to change both focus and location. So, in 1946 the newly named Boro Laboratories and Appliance Company Ltd moved from Southwalk to Catford, where the business began supplying equipment to laboratories. This included an innovative butyrometer shaker stand which was a best seller from 1947 until circa 1990.

As early as 1968, the expertise in specialised medical and scientific refrigeration really began to escalate and in addition to the laboratory fridges we were supplying, Boro Labs as it was now called started selling and providing service support for Ultra Low Temperature Freezers. This quickly evolved in to the Labcold division of the company and, by the time the company relocated from Catford to Aldermaston in 1974 the company was beginning to evolve in to a scientific refrigeration designer and manufacture. The name was finally changed to Labcold in the noughties after the company halted all lines apart from refrigeration.

Since then our fridges have been up Everest, to the South Pole, war zones and your hospital and local pharmacy. Labcold was the first UK medical refrigeration company to gain ISO13485 quality management system accreditation in 2008, demonstrating our ability to provide medical devices and related services that consistently met customer and regulatory requirements for our design, manufacture and maintenance of blood banks, plasma freezers and platelet incubators and agitators.

Today, Labcold goes from strength to strength providing medical and scientific refrigeration and maintenance services for a wide range of organisations including the NHS and British army, although we still work with a few we did all those years ago in London. We recently added an in house UKAS temperature calibration laboratory no:8898 to the services we can provide our customers plus we have plans for new models across a number of ranges.

The old company strap line was ‘services for science’. This philosophy has stood us in good stead and enabled us to work closely with our customers to provide the products and services they need for their specialism. As a result, Labcold would like to take this opportunity to thank all our customers, past and present for our longevity because you are at the heart of what we do and we look forward to the future, serving science for the next 85 years and more!