March 2010 Walabs - Water analytical laboratories is under development which will provide the cheapest Legionella, COD, BOD, conductivity, pH, total solids, phosphates, and many other parameters in the UK. The service is being set up by specific request of potential clients who are fed up with poor service and high prices they are currently experiencing. Our I.T. management strength, transport efficiencies and process knowledge will be deployed to full effect to provide a real alternative to the present suppliers of this service. We will do for water testing what we have done for food, provide a quality cost effective service delivered on time, at a reasonable price, at the right quality with extra delight. www.walabs.co.uk

March 2010 EuroFal is launched. This is a service directly targeting mainland Europe on the back of our successes providing a cost effective nutritional testing service across our continent. The web page and service will be developed over the coming months. www.eurofal.com

Feb 2010 Falabshop takes its 500th order, catering for those clients other labs do not want with the majority of the work being microbiology from the UK. We turnaway no one! Nutritional work from France and Holland is increasing monthly taking advantage of our cost effective rates. New clients from the African continent, Hong Kong, the USA, Canada, Mexico and Brazil are also using the facilities for nutritional labelling. The myth that regional or even International labs are required is now well and truly busted. Falabs is the most innovated food testing operation in the UK and Europe.

Feb 2010 Falabs starts work on JIMS which strands for Joint Information Management System. It will sit on the upgraded I.T. platform and will seamlessly link to: our accounting software, our customer relationship management software, NetPortal, our productivity monitoring systems and effectively replace our existing laboratory information management system. It will be an industry leading system which focuses on microbiology and routine nutritional chemistry, with a quality assurance backbone and will serve as the sales ledger. It is being designed primarily around the needs of clients and will make the process of ordering tests to receiving invoices as efficient and as easy as receiving test results themselves. Being independent means we can continue with our catch phrase of Investing in Testing without hinderance.

Feb 2010 Falabs orders two more refrigerated vans to cater for significant new business wins and outsource projects.

Feb 2010 Falabs introduces and now offers an overnight refrigerated transportation service to all its customers, complimenting the Labshop.

January 2010 Falabs becomes the exclusive supplier of routine analytical testing to Harrods of London, Harrods has always prided itself on a reputation for excellence and we are extremely honoured to have been selected as a finest quality supplier.

January 2010 FaLabshop is launched, the first routine analytical laboratory to now offer its services easily to everyone without having to set up an account. Analysis can be ordered, samples collected and results delivered online via FaLabshop. There is no minimum order charge, no client is too small and Falabshop opens up our marketplace to all, and unlike many of our competitors we will not turn anyone away. FaLabshop takes credit cards and uses RBS Worldpay.

January 2010 Environmental laboratory and legionella testing facilities under construction. Falabs intends to take the marketplace by storm and reduce the cost of testing for legionella by over 50% of the cheapest competitor; likewise for its new allergen and 'specials' operation due to open in the summer of 2010.

January 2010 Falabs increases its remote monitoring of all temperature controlled environments such as cold rooms and walk-in in incubators to all fridges and ovens in the business. See http://www.falabs.com/temp.html making us one of the most automated and quality assured laboratories in Europe. We are considering making all our temperatures profiles accessible on the internet by all to demonstrate our confidence in our business and staff.

At FALABS we do not monitor the temperatures of our cold rooms or incubators once per day. Why? Because that does not inform of us of anything useful, however it does tick a box for antiquated quality systems, and who can read mercury thermometers accurately and reliably in dark incubators or cold room(bearing in mind that strong light can degrade some agars to form toxic compounds that may restrict the growth of organisms thus affecting results)? We monitor them continuously from multiple points throughout our storage and testing facility. We believe temperature control is crucial to the quality of test results, especially in microbiological analysis and monitoring temperatures just once per day or even several times is wholly inadequate where food safety is concerned. Why? Because taking temperatures typically just once first thing in a morning, or once every several hours gives no indication of any temperature failure issues which may effect the validity of microbiological results after the required incubation periods.

All our temperature controlled environments have mutiple (at least 3) calibrated thermistors placed in the working zones, low, middle, high, back or front etc  and temperatures are monitored continuously, with records made once every minute, 24 hours a day 365 days per year. Temperature control can be audited thus giving proper quality assurance with no gaps.

Since adopting this advanced system, we have been able to improve our quality systems so that we are 100% confident in our ability to provide a reliable, assured testing environment.

Actual recording of one of the specialist shelf life storage facilities online.

If an out of specification incident happens for longer than a pre-determined period a blue strobe is activated at the point of concern, so lab staff can take immediate action. An email message is also automatically sent to lab managers from the remote monitoring company CWi Technical Ltd , based in Lincolnshire. It details the issue to us as a further backup system. Records are maintained in off site databases with CWi Technical Ltd, and the whole system is monitored via the use of web technology on the NetPortal platform.

The system has cost over £10,000 to install and we believe we have the most sophisticated monitoring systems in any routine food lab in the World, and we actually know how good our equipment is. Can other labs demonstrate such control?

January 2010 Netportal version 5 is launched, a significant upgrade incorporating advanced shelf life functions to include shelf life specific registration, result viewing, graphing and presentation facilities. Other features include a dashboard for quick summary viewing, advanced graphing tools, smooth scroll down searching, more management reports, improved nutritional labelling production functions, purchase order number registering and online invoicing further removing paper, printing and posting

December 2009 New Lab:- Falabs can now announce it is in negotiations to open a lab in India. Our technology, management techniques etc.. wil be transferred and the subsidiary will serve the local market in the S.East of India as well as exporters to the United Kingdom and Europe. If our plans come to fruition the site will be operating early 2011 however this is a very early conceptual stage.

November 2009 New Service:- Nutritional analysis of food products to be cooked – label development or verification. Using our purpose built kitchen designed to mimic the domestic kitchen, Food Analytical Services can prepare and cook food products for analysis according to the label information, analyse them and express nutritional information per 100g and per portion served.  We believe we are the only routine testing lab with such facilities and the NPD kitchen is part of our nutritional chemistry department.

We must stress that we cannot develop cooking instructions but can verify them and develop or check associated nutritional labelling, and express results in terms of confidence limits for due diligence defence.

We have installed fan assisted and conventional ovens, hotplates, a variety of domestic Microwave powers from 650W to 1000W,  bread makers, barbeques and a large scope of cooking utensils for : Baking, Roasting, Shallow frying, deep frying, grilling, cooking by Wok, steaming, boiling, casseroling, slow cooking, Barbequing , bread makers etc…  Cooking can be done to scientific levels of accuracy or in line with domestic uncertainty.

October 2009 Falabs has just processed 3,800 samples in one day at our Stoke Micro lab which is our record and a notable newsworthy event. Also we have received the 100th sample for Cat 2 nutritional analysis after launching our European and International nutritional offer of 95 Euros a sample, after only 8 days, with several samples arriving from the USA. Falabs are now setting worldwide standards!!!

October 2009 Further price reductions for Europe bringing nutritional prices down to UK Levels. See European Sales. This is a direct challenge to all low volume high cost food testing laboratory services accross the continent bringing much needed benefits to European manufacturers. We can do this through our low cost base and unbeatable quality.

October 2009 NetPortal version 4.5 launched. Incorporates shelf life registration and reporting enhancements. Also launching NutrilabelStat, the NetPortal Nutritional Labeling and traffic light information report package with Due Diligence defence procedures, an industry first and market leader aimed at manufacturers and retailers responsible for New Product Development (NPD) and maintaining product/labelling legality.

September 2009 New Look website published.

September 2009 Independant Supplementary Audit (ISA) by Campden BRI on behalf of Mark & Spencers Accrediation. Very successful.

September 2009 Three sites now identified as posible candidates for our second site, one in Nottingham/Mansfield, one in Lincoln and one in Peterbourough, negotiations continue. We aniticipate the site will be active and ready for UKAS assessment within three months of signing heads of terms.

September 2009 Rockford UK Ltd has won the three year contract to continue to supply Falabs with its I.T. Base platform. All equipment is to be renewed and moved OFFSITE, and a dedicated communications link will be setup with its sites as well as virtualisation of all data, thus data assurance has been significantly increased. Falabs will have the most advanced and up to date I.T. systems available, second to no one in the UK or Europe.

September 2009 Falabs has now moved into the overall THIRD place in the UK Food Testing Market from 5th place and the Stoke site is now regularly coping with up to 3,000 samples per day, making it easily the number one food testing laboratory in the UK. With enhanced quality and operational management, productivities and Turn Around Times (TRT's) are the highest and fastest in the UK thus accounting for the low cost yet high quality service, and achieving our primary business aim promised at inception.

September 2009 All temperature monitoring in cold rooms, incubators, etc are now monitored automatically with all data being securely web based. Any issues are picked up within seconds and rectified promptly rather than waiting until somebody notices or relies on the conventional once per 24 hour check using traditional mercury/alcohol in glass thermometers, again putting Falabs into the lead. This system was installed in June, has now ended its trial period and has been fully adopted for use and will be extended throughout Falabs inJan/Feb 2010.

September 2009 Welcomes Lyn Richards as Operations Director, Microbiology. Working closely with Vicky Kusnierz and Andrea Myatt together they are a team second to none in the UK food testing business. Lyn graduated from University in 1996 and immediately started her career with the Birkenhead site of CPA laboratories, which was later acquired by Eurofins Laboratories Ltd. Her time within the contract laboratory industry has given her considerable experience with most matrix types currently produced in the UK and the accreditation/approval requirements of their manufacturers. Her role lasted 13 years and included working at several UK sites in a quality, operational and technical capacity. She is well known to several existing Falabs clients and her joining marks the start of the plans of Falabs to move into the number one position in the UK by 2013 in routine food testing.

Lyn Richards, Operations Director of Microbiology	Vicky Kusnierz, Technical Director of Microbiology

September 2009 Having delayed plans to open a second site Falabs has re-opened negotiations and an announcement will be made soon regarding a 5,000-10,000 sq ft site in the Nottingham/Mansfield area. Several more vans have been ordered and the refrigerated transport fleet will be converted from Fiat to Ford over a three year replacement cycle.