Laboratory → About
An independent laboratory, and nothing else
Permeon Analytical Ltd has run shelf-life and packaging testing from Feeder Road since 2006. We have no packaging supply arm, no certification business and no consultancy that recommends what we then test.
How the laboratory came about
The laboratory was founded by two analysts who had spent the previous decade in retailer technical roles, sending the microbiological half of every shelf-life question to one laboratory and the packaging half to another, then trying to reconcile two reports that had been written to different conventions, on samples pulled on different days.
PERMEON exists to remove that reconciliation step. A single protocol, a single set of pull points, one chain of custody and one report covering micro, sensory and barrier.
Twenty years on, the building holds twelve controlled chambers, four permeation cells, a containment microbiology suite and a twelve-booth sensory facility. The staff number nineteen, of whom fourteen are analytical. We have deliberately not opened a second site: splitting a shelf-life study across buildings reintroduces exactly the problem the laboratory was set up to solve.
How we are organised
Four teams share the building. Storage and stability manages the chambers and the pull schedule. Packaging science runs permeation, integrity and transit. Microbiology holds the containment suite. Sensory runs the panel and the booth facility.
A study is owned end to end by one study manager drawn from whichever team carries the largest share of the work, so there is a single person who can answer for the protocol when a retailer's technical team telephones.
What we will not do
We do not set date codes. We report what the data show; the declared life is the food business operator's decision and their legal responsibility.
We do not certify, approve or audit. There is no scheme to buy from us after the testing is done.
We do not accept work where we would be assessing material supplied by a related party, and we decline studies whose protocol has been written to reach a predetermined answer. Both refusals have cost us work, and both are the reason the reports are worth commissioning.
Working with the laboratory
Study manager
One named point of contact for the life of the protocol, reachable by telephone during laboratory hours.
Interim data
Released at each pull point rather than held to the end, so a failing trend can be acted on while the trial is still running.
Retained samples
Held for three months after report issue, so a query can be re-examined on the original material.