Grant Instruments unveils high impact manufacturing facility in Royston

One of Cambridge’s oldest and most globally successful businesses – Grant Instruments – has opened a new headquarters and ramped its capabilities in the process.

The company, which since 1951 has fashioned scientific equipment for household name clients around the world, has moved from Shepreth to nearby Royston into a new, high impact manufacturing facility. 

The move enables Grant to push forward with its next stage of growth, driving high-end innovative solutions that serve scientists globally. 

The site is also a much more environmentally sustainable building and will lead to a lower carbon footprint which Grant says is a key focus for the business.

CEO Mark Davison said: “The new site offers us so much opportunity to grow and support our customers’ future growth and ambitions. It will enable us to innovate and manufacture at a much faster rate and in a more sustainable way, which aligns very much to our ethos and that of the scientific community we serve.”

Grant Instruments is a longstanding part of the Cambridge technology ecosystem, contributing over 70 years of innovation. That tradition is carried into the future by the drive and motivation of the team. 

The company is a sustainability first organisation, from its product design and development through to driving fundamental workplace changes including a 4-day working week. The new facility is called ‘Evolution House’ reflecting the changes that are expected to continue.

Davison adds: “Over the past year we have made huge changes at Grant Instruments. The new site is the most visible of these but the move to four-day working has been arguably as revolutionary. 

“The positive impact of these on staff morale and workplace practice has exceeded our expectations. The changes don’t stop here and we will continue our evolution and growth.”

Additional to the fresh facility, the company is also launching a new state-of-the-art cryopreservation system known as CRFT. The technology is produced at the new site and offers a more sustainable and safer approach to the freezing and thawing of highly sensitive biological samples for scientific research. 

Applications include IVF (human and veterinary), stem cell banking, vaccine research and drug discovery. Grant says the system brings accuracy, precision and reproducibility to biological cryopreservation and, importantly, improves the viability of cells when thawed for use.

Davison continued: “Our new CRFT system is an exciting product for us to launch. The new version was driven by feedback from our customers. They wanted a system that allows precision, accuracy and flexibility in cryopreservation. We are incredibly happy to be able to launch this multi-format device to the scientific community and look forward to hearing about the excellent research outcomes this enables in the future.”

Since Grant began its journey it has become renowned worldwide for its solutions. The company has built a global presence across 70 different countries, selling more than 10,000 scientific equipment products annually plus 80,000 data acquisition products worldwide. 

The company now has more than 60 employees across the US, India and in the UK.

Grant Instruments was born through one man’s vision and passion for invention. Peter Ward, a Cambridge University economics graduate and Olympic three-mile runner, had a hobby of repairing mechanical singing birds.

From this, some might say, unlikely link, Ward went on to create his first commercial invention – a water bath. Operating from a folly in the Old Vicarage grounds, together with Cecil Chapman who joined Grant in 1954, they built the foundations of Grant Instruments to instil strong values that remain deep-rooted in the company today.

As a pioneer of temperature control, Grant has been developing innovative scientific apparatus solutions and data acquisition tools for decades to the scientific, healthcare and industrial markets the length and breadth of the planet.