Materials characterization company Malvern Instruments has officially opened a new multipurpose facility in Houston. At 22,000 sq ft, the new building is double the size of Malvern’s previous premises in Houston and houses state-of-the-art laboratories, product development, manufacturing, and commercial operations. The site will be a Center of Excellence for the company’s separations products, as well as providing applications development and demonstration facilities for all Malvern systems.

Malvern managing director Paul Walker and operations director Simon McCaskie both joined Brian Dutko, president of the Americas Operation for Malvern Instruments, to declare the new facility open and to welcome the Houston team to their new home.

“I am really proud of what is a truly first-class facility and I can’t wait to welcome more visitors,” said Dutko. “Having the new application laboratories is particularly exciting because not only will we showcase our complete line of chromatography systems, we’ll also feature Malvern’s entire product offering of particle characterization and imaging systems, along with our rheometers. We can now be even more responsive to our expanding customer base in the United States, as well as some of the emerging markets in Latin America.” Adjacent to the analytical suite is an industrial laboratory built to accommodate Malvern’s expanding range of in-process analyzers, as well as the company’s rheometers. “Access to the industrial laboratory set-up will help us to better meet the needs of a thriving polymer industry on the Gulf Coast,” explained Dutko.

He went on to say, “Perhaps most important of all for our customers, we have some 600 sq ft of training rooms for seminars, user forums, schools, workshops, and training sessions. We hope everyone will take full advantage of what Malvern has to offer here.”

Making best use of the facility’s advantageous location, Malvern’s sister company PANalytical, specialist in X-Ray analysis systems, also has a demonstration laboratory in the building.

Malvern’s materials characterization range includes separations products that provide a choice of integrated or modular gel permeation chromatography/size exclusion chromatography systems for the analysis of molecular weight, molecular weight distribution, molecular size and structure of proteins and natural and synthetic polymers. These range from complete separation and detection systems, to detector combinations that can be added to an existing GPC/SEC system.

For more information, visit www.malvern.com.