In January 2024, a bottle of Vacuneda® was returned to Medical Wire and Equipment Co. (Bath) Ltd headquarters. The bottle of blood culture medium was discovered after a hospital, based in South England, cleaned out a condemned office. The manufacture of Vacuneda® was discontinued in the 1980’s as laboratories centralised and adopted new technologies with automated platforms.

Amongst other aging treasures of a once bustling microbiology laboratory office, MWE’s Vacuneda® had settled on its side, still fully sealed, and sterile. Although the seal in still intact, we would advise against using it.

It is impressive and astonishing that this particular bottle has remained sterile several decades subsequent to this batch’s expiry in ‘84.

We will be displaying this gem of MWE history in our reception area and also congratulated our production and quality control teams on their high manufacturing standards.

SIMGA-VIROCULT has been through rigorous testing to allow us to extend the products shelf-life from 12-months from the date of manufacture to 24-months from the date of manufacture. This allows you to hold stock today and removes the worry of the product going out of date in within the year. If you have any suggestions on how further updates to mwe products can make life easier for yourself and your team, please contact us through our website!

Established for over 70 years, Medical Wire (MWE) began as a family run manufacturer of medical devices in the UK. Today, we have grown into a global enterprise supporting organisations and governments worldwide in industries including food, forensics, clinical, pharmaceutical, laboratories, and even veterinary.

Our global presence in over 120 countries has meant that we have had the opportunity to invest in our people, equipment, and the business. Our aim over the years has been to repatriate manufacturing skills and resources, reducing reliance from overseas.

Despite the growth, our customers have always been at the heart of the business and supporting their needs has been our main priority.

Every product innovation over the last 70 years has been driven by our efforts to deliver good quality, safe and reliable solutions to our customers.

As part of our service provision, we deliver bespoke training programmes to organisations and clinicians worldwide, helping them understand changing industry norms within medical devices and how to apply them.

The pandemic was challenging for people, businesses and communities, globally.

As COVID-19 spread, there was a global shortage of swabs, which meant that the UK government needed support in delivering COVID-19 testing. COVID-19 became the focus of hospitals, laboratories and businesses. Medical Wire decided to reinvest resources into supporting the nation in this crisis, becoming one of the biggest pre-analytics providers in the world and the only UK manufacturer of swabs.

We invested in new production capacity, new management, trained our teams all to meet this demand. It wasn’t always smooth sailing as we had to ensure our employees were safe and protected. We also had to make sure that our customers in laboratories and hospitals were looked after, while fulfilling the nation’s needs.

The Future

Over the last few years Medical Wire has gone from strength to strength.

We are now leading the market by providing reliable, safe, and good quality medical devices that meet manufacturing standards.

We have developed robust lean processes to ensure we have greater capacity to meet supply-chain demand in the UK and globally.

We will continue supporting the community of Wiltshire by providing job opportunities, leadership training, and aid to charities like the Wilshire Air Ambulance, Julia’s House, and GBS Society.

Our aim is to build a brighter future for the diagnostics industry but also make the present count.

After a difficult two years of no face to face conferences being held due to the pandemic, MWE is back exhibiting at conferences globally.

This year we have already exhibited at Medlab Middle East, IBMS in the UK, the Dutch Microbiology Conference, ECCMID in Portugal, CVS in the US, and we have many more to come. We will also be at the AACC Conference in Chicago, ESCV in Manchester, Medica in Germany, Microbe and BSMT in the UK, to name a few.

MWE has been supporting the clinical industry worldwide including the UK for 70 years bringing compliant, innovative, and good quality specimen collection devices to the diagnostics market.

Our products like the Universal Transport Device ∑-VCM™ and viral transport media ∑-VIROCULT® along with our Swabs have been used globally throughout the pandemic.

At these conferences we will be showcasing our range of products including ∑-MM™, an inactivation media which has proven to save costs and improve efficiencies in many laboratories worldwide.

In addition, we will also be talking about how our products are used with various automated systems on the market, and have been validated by our customers, for molecular diagnostics.

Stay up-to-date on the conferences we will be attending in the events section of our website.