Supply of a Multifunctional Microplate Reader

The Health and Safety Laboratory (HSL) is Britain's leading industrial health and safety facility. Operating as an agency of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), HSL supports HSE’s mission to protect people's health and safety by ensuring risks in the changing workplace are properly controlled.

HSL are inviting tenders for the supply of a multifunctional plate reader with colorimetric, fluorescence and luminescence mode equipped with an environmental atmosphere control chamber suited for toxicological tests on living cells. Part of our requirement is that new the instrument provides a multichromator mode for the fluoresence measurements and Spectral scanning for the light absorbance.

The new instrument is replacing a 12 year old mutlifunctional platereader which can no longer be supported by the manufacturer.

HSL provides a range of analytical services to external customers which enable them to assess exposure to biohazards. These services are essential to underpin companies risk assessments for consumer products and for protecting the health of those working with these materials. Over the last ten years HSL has added bespoke toxicological assay services which customers use to determine whether substances in their manufacturing process are potentially hazardous to health.

The analytical immunoassay and enzyme monitoring services that HSL provide are dependent completely on the use of micro-titre plate readers to control chemical and biological reactions and to quantity analytes in large numbers of samples (high throughput). The existing Tecan multifunctional plate reader purchased 12 years ago requires more manual optimisation of assays adding at least 5% more time than should be required and should it break down is not supported for maintenance by the manufacturer.

Additional information: Contract start date is estimated.

HSL has applied broad estimates in the lowest and highest value fields in the 'Summary Information' section.