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Don Whitley Scientific have worked with a market-leading, Northumberland-based food testing laboratory for almost 20 years. The lab routinely carries out a range of microbial tests for Listeria, Salmonella, E. Coli and other bacteria. Earlier this year they added to their range of media and sample preparation equipment. We recently spoke to the Microbiology Production Manager about how the laboratory staff are finding the new gravimetric diluters, blenders and media preparator.
“Footprint-wise the Diluwel takes up a lot less space than previous models we’ve used, and it’s also more lightweight and far easier to clean. The moveable pumps are extremely helpful and provide much more flexibility – although we mostly use 2 pumps, we really like that there is the option to scale up to 4 pumps if we needed them. The speed of the pumps is also significantly better. Something that is great for our QC is the ability to assign tolerances, so if the sample weight is outside of the designated range the Diluwel won’t dispense. We really like the metal bag holder, having used plastic ones in the past which were prone to splitting or snapping.”
“We’ve been very impressed with our Mixwels. They are more compact and much quieter than other blenders we’ve used. It’s ideal that the drip tray is built into the door, and they’re so easy to clean as any bag splits are contained at the front. They’re also noticeably lighter than previous models.”
MEDIAWEL 30 Automatic Media Preparator
“The Mediawel 30 has been a game-changer in terms of the volume of media we can produce. We average around 70 litres a day and this is only set to increase. With this new media preparator we can do a 20 litre run in the same time it used to take us to do 8 litres! Our staff love it and find it intuitive to use. The USB stick method works well for data logging, and the cleaning process is much simpler with the drainage plug to extract excess media from the bottom.
Overall we’ve seen a huge improvement with all of this new equipment, and are looking to buy more of each soon, which speaks for itself!”
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