Food Testing Labs Share Top Oxoid Award

The judges of the 2005/2006 Oxoid (Basingstoke, UK) Food and Brewing Awards have given joint first place honors to two food testing labs: Geest Central Laboratory (Geest, Holbeach, UK) and Unilever Laboratories (Unilever Ice Cream and Frozen Food, Lowestoft, UK) for the exceptional work undertaken in the past year by each team.

The judges were impressed by the way Geest Central Laboratory had introduced new and improved testing methods and expanded the level of testing undertaken. These improvements were achieved at the same time while consolidating two laboratories into one (with the closure of one laboratory site and the consequent retraining and restructuring involved in such an amalgamation) and while implementing a new laboratory information management system (LIMS).

The laboratory at Unilever Ice Cream impressed the judges with the improvements they had made to working practices and internal company relations. They had adopted a "one lab” project that combined the talents of the chemistry and microbiology laboratories, leading to new policies, procedures and ways of working while, at the same time, gaining ISO17025 accreditation. The laboratory now offers the services of an internal customer service representative that can help and advise on analytic methods that may assist, for example, in new product development.

"There was no doubt in our minds that both Geest and Unilever Ice Cream and
Frozen Foods should be joint first winners--we just couldn't choose between them. They have faced different challenges but the efforts made by both clearly demonstrated excellent team working and a commitment to improving standards of food safety and hygiene within their respective organizations,” said Cheryl Mooney, food and industrial applications manager at Oxoid and chairman of the judges. "It's an unusual move to award two first prizes, but this shows the exceptional quality of both laboratories and we are delighted to reward them both.”

Alliance Technical Labs (Suffolk, UK) took third prize and a Highly Commended award was given to Northern Foods (Nottingham, UK). The award winners will be presented with their prizes at the Oxoid Food Seminar Day in September 2006.



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