Minimising Delivery Lead Times and Environmental Footprint for ISO 14001
Seward Ltd., manufacturer of the world leading range of original Stomacher® paddle blenders and accessories used in sample preparation for microbiological analysis, has increased production capacity for Stomacher® blender bags with additional manufacturing in the UK. By locally manufacturing its range of Stomacher® 400 and 3500 mL bags at its UK facility, Seward has now reduced delivery lead times for its European customers and also minimised its environmental footprint.
Seward already ensures rapid supply of Stomacher products through local bag manufacture and stocking from regional sites in USA and Singapore to fully support its customers worldwide. In addition to reducing delivery times, this policy for local manufacture and stocking also helps to minimise the impact of rising material and transportation costs on product price. Furthermore, this complies with Seward’s environmental policy to minimise material and energy wastage and promote the use of recyclable and renewable materials. In doing this, the company aims to achieve the ISO 14001 environmental management standard by mid 2014.
Since starting manufacturing Stomacher bags in the UK, Seward is now recycling 85% of all its plastic and cardboard material production waste. This is contributing to an overall 40% reduction in general company waste.
“We are committed to operating our business in a manner that is sensitive to the needs and concerns of the people and surrounding environment – bringing our manufacturing processes in line with our environmental policy is just one of a number of measures that we have adopted to achieve this,” said Dan Crothers, General Manager, Seward Ltd. “We are particularly keen to talk to customers who have similar environmental policies to us and interested in collaborating to reduce the environmental impact of laboratory testing. We can also discuss OEM manufacturing requirements.”
Seward’s Stomacher bag range has been designed to fulfill all applications from sample blending, straining and storage, including bags designed for extensive blending (processes requiring more than 15 minutes on the machine) and small samples for life science applications.
Made from high quality food grade virgin LDPE granule extruded to 65 µm film thickness, Stomacher blender bags are designed to withstand extensive blending without tears or perforations. This provides a low cost option for sample preparation with no risk of cross contamination between samples. All Stomacher blender bags are irradiated sterile and a certificate of irradiation is available for all bag products upon request.
