The School of Pharmacy at Aberdeen's Robert Gordon University was looking for a tablet press for laboratory use by its students and checked out the market both at home and abroad
Isopak , a distributor of equipment to the medical, healthcare and pharmaceutical sectors, says it is used to putting one over on its UK rivals, but for its latest contract it beat off the competition worldwide.
The School of Pharmacy at Aberdeen's Robert Gordon University was looking for a tablet press for laboratory use by its students and checked out the market both at home and abroad.
It eventually narrowed the global field down to just two - Isopak and another company - with Isopak coming out on top.
The school's spokesman Dale Munday said when the final choice was made there was little to separate the two machines.
Both were competitively priced but Isopak outscored its rival because of its advanced software.
''We have been very impressed with Isopak's overall levels of service.
"The company has bent over backwards to ensure that the machine is what we wanted and is designed to meet our requirements,'' he said.
And neither Munday nor the students - there are up to 130 in each of the four years catered for by the school and all at some time or another will have need of the tablet press - have been disappointed with the outcome says Isopak.
The press supplied to what is the UK's most northerly school of pharmacy - which generally accounts for its insistence on the best equipment as after sales service usually necessitates a lengthy journey - is a CPR-6 from Italian manufacturer Dott Bonapace for which Isopak is sole UK distributor.
It is capable of producing up to 2500 tablets an hour, though the students are unlikely to require it to operate to full potential on more than the rare occasion.
Rather they produce small quantities of many different tablets for testing and experimentation purposes.
The students and Dr Munday have been impressed by the CPR-6's robust construction, its ease of operation and - a big plus - by the lack of noise it produces.
''It is operating alongside a pair of somewhat elderly presses, one of which has almost reached the end of its life, and they are very noisy.
"The Isopak press is so quiet,'' said Munday.
So lack of noise and ease of tool change, to enable different sizes of tablets to be produced one after the other, are two big plus points.
Another is convenience with the CPR-6, normally a bench-top unit and one of the world's smallest at that, mounted on a trolley - which holds the instrumentation hardware - so it can be easily moved around, or out of the way when it is not needed.
Isopak's managing director Robin Davies said the unit was fully Windows compatible and could be interfaced with almost any PC.
''It has been developed to allow the user to see exactly what is happening to their product during pressing.
"It records all activities and measures the compression forces needed for transfer of product to larger, full-scale production systems.
QIn its new version it really is a very impressive unit and it is not difficult to see why it appealed to the pharmacy school,'' he said.
