What Type of Test Tube or Vial Do I Need?

25th October 2022

The Different “Plastics”

We are often asked what type of container would be most suitable for any particular task. Below are some general guidelines on the different materials available, which should help you choose.

Should you have any specific questions please ask, as we are here to help!

Polystyrene (PS) These are super clear containers, ideal for inspection of contents. Polystyrene is however brittle, even at room temperature and it distorts at 70°C. PS cannot be sterilized or autoclaved.

Polypropylene (PP) A semi transparent material, not as clear as PS but a more flexible material so it withstands handling much better  Operates in a wide range of temperatures from -40°C to + 135°C. PP can be autoclaved and sterilised.

Polyethylene (LDPE and HDPE) Another translucent flexible material that operates in a wide range of temperatures from -40°C to + 121°C (for high density polyethylene, HDPE) and   -40°C to + 50°C (for low density polyethylene, LDPE). Can be sterilised chemically, but not autoclaved. Chemically very inert, it is suitable for use with the widest range of chemicals.

Still not sure? Contact us

Closures and caps for all tubes

6th October 2022

Every lab will tend to accumulate a variety of open tubes which need to be closed.

 There are no end of closures available, and we have a wide range of push in and push in plugs available  – we are sure we can find a solution for any example.

Whether you require a push in cork from the ridiculously tiny to pretty large, a rubber bung or a plastic cap,  the right cap exists. If you are unable to find what you require then please do not hesitate to contact Nigel 

As with most of our products, we are happy to sell from 1 piece to ‘thousands according to your needs.

 Call or email Nigel to explore how TCC can supply you with the product you need at the right quantity and price.

Nitrile Gloves for all requirements

15th June 2022

Whatever your need for disposable gloves, the range launched by The Consumables Company will provide excellent protection at the best price.

We have the Ebony glove, designed for extended periods of use, it features a high thickness and tear strength compared to normal gloves, combined with textured palms and finger tips for ultimate grip and control. The ultimate choice for tattoo artists and medical practitioners. Ebony

Next up is Ultra Purple, a purple glove designed for healthcare applications – suitable for extended periods of use. Ultra Purple

Third in the range is Ultra Plus Lite – the ultimate medium thickness glove – available in blue. A mainstay of the mechanics garage, designed for medium periods of use. Mechanics love them because they can wear 1 pair for a long period safe in the knowledge the glove will not easily tear. Ultra Plus Lite

Lastly, the aptly named Ultra Plus Prime in black or blue. This is the perfect budget glove, where the risks are low, but cleanliness is still required. At this strength it is the cheapest reputable brand on the market. Ultra Plus Prime

5kg Clinical Waste Sacks

2nd December 2021

We are always looking to add new product to our stock of laboratory consumables.

We now stock Clinical Waste Sacks – the first is the 5kg Medium duty yellow bag

Our  clinical waste sacks are produced using co-extrusion technology and are printed according to all UN requirements.

• Yellow for incineration only.
• Medium Duty 5Kg
• 14 x 22 x 25″  (355x559x635mm)
• On the roll (10 rolls x50 pcs)
• 30 Litres capacity
• Printed according to UN requirements
• 500 liners per Box

 To buy this product, the product code is CWSM

Please call or email Nigel to discuss your requirements.

Swabs for all purpose

21st August 2021

TCC offer a comprehensive range of medical swabs for every conceivable application.

We are very proud to have contracts with several NHS trusts, as well as medical and veterinary clinics both in the UK and elsewhere.

Outside of the healthcare market, we supply to a range of industrial and scientific customers, as well as retailers and individuals.

The vast majority of our swabs are sterile, the rest are aseptically manufactured.

We start at the simple foam oral swab (latex and pharmaceutical free) useful for swabbing or application of liquid product, through wooden stem, cotton head, to extra large cotton head on long (150mm or 200mm) polypropylene tube.

The extra large head on 200mm (11mm diameter instead of the standard 4mm) is our biggest seller, to several hospitals and clinics in the UK. TCC are the only supplier of this product.

We sell each product in various quantities, from a full box to a retail pack.

Click here to find details of every swab we have available in our range. 

 Call or email Nigel to explore how TCC can supply you with the product you need at the right quantity and price.

Sterile, racked filtered pipette tips, available to order now.

21st August 2021

We are pleased to announce that we are now stocking a range of sterile filtered pipette tips. We have partnered with Biologix to supply sterile, racked, filtered pipette tips to the UK market.

Biologix are a renowned manufacturer in the healthcare and science, providing products which meet all the requirements of the demanding customers in this space.

Our current range consist of 2 filtered, sterile products – 100µl and 200µl in racks of 96.

These are sterile, RNase and DNase free, with a long expiry date (currently May 2026)

click here to see further details of the 100µl product (SKU FTIP100)

click here to see further details of the 200µl product (SKU FTIP200)

Please call or email Nigel to discuss your requirements.

50ml slimline bottle – can be posted at Royal Mail Large Letter rate!

3rd August 2021

Our range of Postage Friendly bottles has been expanded over the past 2 years with great success.

In the liquid range, we now have a 30ml, 50ml, 100ml, and 250ml versions available.

In the pill, tablet, and powder range we have a 150ml, and 320ml version available.

As more business has turned to online sales, the savings available by using these bottles rack up at an impressive rate.  By posting as a Large Letter rather than as a Parcel, the savings are as great as £2 per posting. The sums add up to a smart move. Customers also love the packaging, and they are fully recyclable in HDPE.

The popularity has been so immense, we have commercial customers taking thousands of bottles throughout Europe and as far away as Canada.

Customers use the liquid range for diverse products, for example hand sanitizer, peroxide, adhesive, liquid fertilizer, whiskey and wine, nail varnish remover, cosmetics for travel, perfumes and scents, food additives, pesticides and fungicides, brake fluid, shoe polish and many more… The tablet and powder versions are used for human and animal food supplements, nutritional products, powdered cosmetics, and glitter.

The liquids bottles are available with wadded screw caps, 2 part nozzle caps, and  atomizers, all offering leak proof sealing.  The tablet and powder bottles come with a foil lined push on cap.

Whatever your location and application, we will have the solution for your packaging needs.

Click here for details of the entire product range.

Reagent bottles, PTFE liner discs & new filters

16th August 2019

New to the website the following 3 products – please click any of the links below for product details:

250GL – 250ml clear graduated glass reagent bottles

PTFELD – PTFE liner discs

FILTGD – GE Healthcare Whatman™ GD/X syringe filters 25mm 0.45 µm nylon media with polypropylene (PP) housing

Pipettes for Pudding Tipple

11th November 2017

pudding with foodsafe pipettes

Homemade or shop bought, individual puddings or family-sized, who doesn’t like a moist Christmas pudding – or the fun of adding your favourite tipple?  Foodsafe pipettes are great for this purpose, and for fun at Christmas-time, why not serve the matured pudding with a pipette for dinner guests to dispense – its sure to be a talking point.

For those less keen on the forthcoming Black Friday weekend promotions, why not turn your thoughts to the tradition of Stir Up Sunday on 25 November 2018?  Put on your apron and gather your family and friends together to make a Christmas pudding or Christmas cake.  It’s the day when wishes are said to come true, so get stirring!

Here’s a link to some baking ideas from the BBC Good Food Guide.  Being of religious origination, Stir Up Sunday is takes place on the last Sunday before the first Sunday of Advent,

Putting a silver coin in the pudding is another age-old custom that is said to bring luck to the person that finds it. In the UK the coin traditionally used was a silver ‘six pence’. The closest coin to that now is a five pence piece!

“The tradition seems to date back to the Twelfth Night Cake which was eaten during the festivities on the ‘Twelfth Night’ of Christmas (the official end of the Christmas celebrations). Originally a dried pea or bean was baked in the cake and whoever got it, was ‘king or queen’ for the night. There are records of this practice going back to the court of Edward II (early 1300s). The bean was also sometimes a silver ring of small crown. The first coins used were a Silver Farthing or penny. After WW1 it became a threepenny bit and then a sixpence.”

Whether you most enjoy adding flavour, making wishes or adding lucky charms to your pudding – we hope you enjoy your Christmas cooking – and be sure to inspect your pudding carefully before eating, to avoid an unexpected visit to the dentist!

Batty for Halloween?

30th October 2017

It’s the time of year when thoughts turn to ghouls, spooks and more.  Here at The Consumables Company, we’ve compiled a Pinterest board which is brimming over with ideas for laboratory inspired Halloween tricks and treats.

Halloween is a great time to embrace your inner mad scientist; grab a laboratory flask and some test tubes and create some oozing, bubbly, slimy mixtures and enjoy the fun.  We hope you enjoy creating your best party ever; as much as we’ve loved curating these ideas for you.

We have also been working with several animal rescue charities recently, who use our teeny pipettes to feed the babies that are in their care. 

Did you know there are 18 species of bat living in the UK?  This baby bat (or pup as they are known) was being looked after at The Secret World Wildlife Rescue Centre in Somerset.   At the centre, they aim to prevent British wildlife from suffering needlessly and inspire an understanding and love of wildlife and the countryside. 

The bat pups are sometimes fed with goat’s milk which is similar to the composition of bat’s milk. They’ll be fed between every one to three hours depending on the bat’s size and species.  

A rescue bat being pipette fed

Although bats feature a great deal around Halloween, they may already be hibernating at this time of year.  Instead of thinking that bats are somehow scary we should be celebrating their usefulness to the environment; some plants depend on bats to pollinate flowers and disperse seeds, while other bats help pest control by eating insects.

Unfortunately, the UK bat population has greatly reduced over the past few years; many of the sites where bats would feed and roost have been destroyed for the construction of homes and roads, as our towns and cities have expanded. 

The extensive use of pesticides in farming has reduced the numbers of insects that the bats fed upon and also killed some of the bats themselves. Now all British bats and the areas where they roost are protected by law.

We are delighted to support the work of these animal rehabilitation centres and love seeing the pictures and hearing the stories of their work.

We are especially thrilled to see our products being used in exciting and different ways, if you’d like us to feature you, please get in touch.

No hibernating at Flavourtown Bakery where they have produced these tasty Halloween cupcakes, some with potion filled pipettes!

Lovingly Crafted Cocktails … …

16th October 2017

Following on from the British Food Fortnight theme, it’s time for cocktail mixing! A relatively new business, Myatt’s Fields Cocktails is a handmade cocktail company set up by Clemency and Cyrus. They share a deep love in the craft of fine cocktail making.

What makes their specially crafted cocktails different from the norm is their process of aging cocktails. This enhances the flavours and creates a smokiness and subtlety that you don’t find in a freshly mixed drink. Clemency and Cyrus explain, “At Myatt’s Fields Cocktails, we age our core range under glass, so the drinks mentioned here are the same superb drink every single time. Ageing cocktails is a wonderful mix of art and science and has helped light up the cocktail world.” You can read their story here. At The Consumables Company we share their passion for quality and consistency and look forward to seeing them flourish.

In the lab where Myatt’s delectable creations are crafted, our measuring beakers and corked test tubes are put to great use. Whatever your language, we raise our glasses you and say “cheers” the origin of which may be as captured by the following anecdote:

First recorded as “makien cheres” in 1225 AD, the phrase evolved to “what chere be with you?” in the 14th century which was a common greeting in England. Eventually, ‘chere’ began to mean good humour. In 1919, the phrase was first written as the “cheers” we know today.

From Bean to Bar …

7th October 2017

As British Food Fortnight ends, we have another blog to tempt the taste buds, inspired by Annette (Nettie) the Urban Kitchen Chef. Formerly a horticulturist and garden designer, she’s a passionate advocate of supporting the best of British and chocolate!
Annette trained with some of the best chefs in the industry including the chocolatier, Mark Tilling (winner of Bake Off Crème de la Crème 2016) and her passion is patisserie and more recently chocolate.

Recently our metal screw cap containers came in handy to present the components of a chocolate teaching resource kit. The taste buds might be tempted, but the kit contents are not for consumption! Schools, colleges and universities will instead get to enjoy learning about the journey from bean to bar.

Annette says, “I like to use quality ingredients that are in season and wherever possible I use local, traceable produce. I am a firm believer in cooking sustainable food.” As well as catering for your next event, The Urban Chef also offers workshops at a range of locations in Dorset.

Celebrating British Food Fortnight – with pipettes!

4th October 2017

At The Consumables Company we are proud to support British Food Fortnight which this year runs from 23rd September to 8th October 2017.  The event started in 2002 after the Foot and Mouth crisis, to celebrate the diverse variety of producers in food and drink in the UK and promotes the benefits of buying British.  You can read more here www.lovebritishfood.co.uk.

One of our London-based customers is the multi award winning Flavourtown Bakery. Their amazingly talented team includes some of the finest bakers and decorators in the capital and they create cakes and cupcakes by hand and with a meticulous eye for detail, supplying both Harrods and Selfridges with cupcakes.

Laura the company owner, says, “The Consumables Company is like a treasure chest for a company like ours and browsing their website it becomes clear that pipettes would make an epic addition to some of our layer cakes, helping transform our cupcakes into something totally unique.

A business like Flavourtown needs to stand out and last year we wanted something really unusual for a Christmas campaign.  So, after a brainstorming session we decided to develop a Pigs in Blanket cupcake. We knew that the cupcake needed to have caramelised candied bacon for the pigs part of the equation and we paired this with a sage spiced buttermilk cake and icing BUT there was something missing… Cranberry sauce! We knew The Consumables Company would have something to help us top off this unique cupcake concoction and we found it in the shape of pipettes! We filled these with a handmade cranberry sauce and the Pigs in Blankets cupcake was featured in London and national press.”  Spot the pipettes in Flavourtown’s Halloween cupcakes too!

At Flavourtown they believe that if you only put the finest ingredients in you get the most indulgent, mouth-watering treats out!  They only use organic free-range eggs from the farm which are accredited by the Organic Growers Association, The Soil Association, RSPCA Freedom Foods and British Red Lion Quality to ensure the hens receive the highest potential standards of animal welfare, the farmer even hand delivers to the bakery!

Halloween cupcakes with foodsafe pipettes

A little cutie – for a message in a bottle perhaps?

3rd October 2017

Something of a novel spin on laboratory consumables. this cute little glass bottle with cork stopper is sure to be a hit with our creative customers.

Shown here containing cake sprinkles to make a pretty decoration, this bottle has a cornucopia of possible uses …

How about, a message in a bottle for a loved one, as gift tag perhaps or to store fairy dust or glitter, coloured sand or baby’s first tooth?   For Christmas or other celebrations, cover with adhesive and dip in coloured glitter for a sparkly decoration and add string or ribbon – or apply glass paints. Other folks may use the little bottles to store a secret, a wish, a prayer or a spell – the choice is yours.  Search our website for product code GLTC or click here for more information.  You may also like to check out Pinterest boards for inspiration for this product or for ideas for others from our range.  This small bottle shown below with scale rule, excluding the stopper measures 32mm x 12mm.  

Corning brand 4ml round bottom cryo vial

3rd October 2017

New to our range of cryo products, a 4ml, round bottom cryo vial by Corning (manufactuer reference 430490)

As shown on one of the images, the vial has 2ml & 3.6ml graduations where contents can be seen through the vial which is otherwise largely covered by an obscured panel.  These vials close with an internal thread and have the benefit of a washer in the cap assembly to prevent liquid bypass.  Inclusive of the cap, each unit measures 70mm x 12mm.

For further details our product reference is 4CV or click here. To view our other cryo products, simply type cyro in to the search box on our home page.