Middlesbrough’Lab (Cosmetics & Fine chem)

The R&D laboratory at Middlesbrough (UK) offers a wide range of equipment, including

• four 30-plate distillation columns and several stirred reactors, allowing processing of batch quantities from 100 ml to 15 litres. 
• A 5 litre Buchi reactor and a 500ml autoclave are available for processes designed to run at pressures up to 10 Bar. 
• A continuous flow reactor allows evaluation of processes which can be run on a resin bed.

The laboratory has an extensive range of analytical equipment, including

• Gas Chromatographs (GC)
• 2 Gas Chromatographs Mass Spectrometers (GCMS)
• HPLC and Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometer (AA) plus a wide selection of routine equipment typical of a modern analytical laboratory. 
• Additional analytical equipment is available at the two Quality Control laboratories on the two sites.

The laboratory is staffed by 7 scientists, with an average length of service of 15 years, who have an extensive knowledge of contract manufacturing and experience in developing and evaluating new processes, in particular solvent recovery, esterification/transesterification, alkyl capping and oxidation using hydrogen peroxide,  the latter of which has enabled the development of a range of Customer Care products.

The R&D laboratory and staff work closely with both the Commercial and Production teams and are intimately involved in the introduction of new processes to the production facilities, and in the running of production trials of such processes.