Blog & News

Autoclave News

The Right Autoclave for Streamlining Your Lab’s Growth Media Prep

hands holding up a pair of agar plates colonized with fungi/bacteria

Growth media preparation is the cornerstone of any microbiology lab. Not having the media you need when you need it—because someone forgot to start a batch or one failed—creates a log jam that knocks everything off schedule for days. This is especially the case in food safety, monitoring, and quality assurance, where having the right media ready on time can make or break your safety testing workflow.

Eurofins microbiology testing services offers environmental monitoring and product microbiology testing. They annually perform more than 450 million tests in their 900 labs, located in 61 countries across the globe. Eurofins prides themselves on ensuring fast and accurate results to local clientele with as little hassle as possible. This includes offering real-time results through the Eurofins OnLine sample management platform. As such, they are especially sensitive to delays in growth media preparation.

Paulyn Medrano is lab lead at Eurofins Microbiology Laboratories (EML) Garden Grove, where she oversees their media department among other responsibilities. EML Garden Grove serves the greater Southern California area. In addition to their specific microbiology services, EML Garden Grove also serves as a hub, allowing clients access to the entire Eurofins food and supplement testing network. 

Paulyn has seen at first hand how media preparation can become a bottleneck in a microbiology lab. “We were using smaller autoclaves,” she explained, “and it limited our ability to produce larger batches of media on a given day. We would often have to run multiple cycles a day or prioritise urgent media in order to cope with these issues. Running multiple cycles also required us to do maintenance and repair quite frequently.”

How Priorclave Autoclaves Improve Lab Workflow for Eurofins Microbiology Laboratories

Two years ago Eurofins purchased their first Priorclave steam autoclave.

“We picked a Priorclave for three reasons,” Paulyn Medrano explains. “Priorclaves allowed us to produce larger batches of media. Furthermore, another reason we picked a Priorclave is due to its simplicity. The programmable system was easy to navigate for upcoming media technicians. Lastly, we picked a Priorclave because it did not require frequent maintenance and repair.”

Having a more efficient autoclave designed for lab use allowed them to streamline their processes and better organise the workflow.

“We were able to reduce the multiple cycles that we had to run on certain days and it allowed us to create a schedule that consistently produced media without worry of prioritising certain media,” Paulyn notes. “Using the Priorclave was very straight-forward with less maintenance and repairs which in the past would have halted our production of media.…Media techs that had used our older autoclaves have mentioned that Priorclaves were simple and reliable in comparison to others. Priorclaves are, without a doubt, very reliable.… It has been wonderful to use.”

Eurofins has since installed a second even larger Priorclave, further reducing gridlock in their lab and easing strain on their media department.

Having a Priorclave helped Eurofins streamline and improve their media preparation processes—and can do the same for your lab. Ready to shift to a better workflow? Our experts are here to help, and are committed to finding the best solution for you. Get in touch and let’s get your lab running like a well-oiled machine.