Working in the Life Sciences Industry

The Life Sciences industry combines biology and technology to deliver advances that improve our lives and keep us healthy. These specialist facilities operate controlled environments with an infrastructure and cables that provides energy efficiency, security, and access controls.

Keiran, Technical Projects Lead explains: "In all Life Sciences production facilities power is of upmost importance, more often than not 24/7 running. Given the nature of what they are doing, they’re different from a normal building because all the equipment within the building often has to talk to each other."

Every installation is unique, balancing the performance demands of a project while navigating the installation environment and compliance challenges. For instance, have you thought about how a cable flexes at different temperatures? Does microbial growth and cross-contamination pose a threat?

Darren, Sales Director UK & Ireland, continues, "So some of our customers operate within a sterile environment within a for example, a cleanroom. Within a cleanroom. Things like silicon cables, polyurethane cables are paramount, the traditional PVC and XLPE materials may not be acceptable due to off gassing risks. Additionally, these sort of cables have to be delivered on plastic drums, for example, wooden batten drums are not permitted within any cleanroom environment."

So we go beyond simply specifying, we carry out rigorous testing in our own state-of-the-art cable lab to ensure not just compliance but the very highest performance.

Emma, Lab Supervisors provides an example: "So this test is for cold bend at extreme low temperatures, this is to test whether the sheath becomes brittle once I’ve conditioned the samples after 16 hours I’ll begin to turn the handle. If it is substandard cable the cable will become brittle, the sheath will break, it will become cracked"

Mark, Lab Manager explains the reason for these tests: "We never want a cable to fail but we would rather it fail on us whilst we are doing the testing so we can give the customer reassurance that it is not going to fail on them."

Keiran sums up, "So when it comes to a life sciences project the contractors and consultants that I work with understand the imperative need for quality first, you get that at Eland Cables whether that be through our technical knowledge or whether that be through the cables being tested in our state-of-the-art UKAS accredited lab."

The life sciences industry operates at the technological forefront – we make sure the cables you use support the innovation, production and reliability your operation demands.