Oxford Cryosystems specialises in the design and manufacture of devices used to cryogenically cool crystalline samples during X-ray crystallography experiments, allowing users to investigate the structure of a wide range of materials from DNA and proteins to materials used in high tech fuel cells. The company’s devices are widely used by universities, research institutes and pharmaceutical companies in over 60 countries across the world.

In a new application of its technology, Oxford Cryosystems has recently supplied some of its low temperature coolers to the MeerKAT project in South Africa, which is the pre-cursor to the much larger Square Kilometre Array (“SKA”), a multinational initiative, headquartered in the U.K., to build a giant array of radio telescopes over several continents with the aim of producing an unprecedented vision of the early stages of the Universe.

Oxford Cryosystems was established in 1985 by Prof Michael Glazer and John Cosier; it was acquired by Ferraris Group Plc in 2000 and sold in 2010 to a management buy-out team led by Richard Glazer and Dr. Alex Renshaw. Richard will remain as Managing Director and Alex will continue to work as the Technical Director with a focus on the business’ software.

“Becoming part of the Judges group is an excellent fit for the company.”, said Richard Glazer, Managing Director of Oxford Cryosystems, “The individual companies within the group are all innovators within the scientific equipment market, and we believe this environment will allow us to strengthen our global infrastructure and build on our existing technologies.”

Judges Scientific is a group involved in the buy and build of scientific instrument businesses, including Deben, the existing operating subsidiary of Bordeaux, whose product range includes stages to heat and cool samples for their observation with SEMs and X-Ray CT scanners.

Gary Edwards, the Managing Director of Deben, will act as Chairman of Oxford Cryosystems and the Group believes his strong and inventive engineering background will be a positive influence on the future of Oxford Cryosystems.

Alex Hambro, Chairman of Judges, said:

“Oxford Cryosystems is an excellent company supplying first class products to a highly specialised global niche market. We are delighted to welcome Richard, Alex and their colleagues to Judges’ team.”

About Oxford Cryosystems

Oxford Cryosystems is privately held with 20 employees, and is a market-leading UK manufacturer of highly specialised scientific instruments and software. The company originated in a laboratory of Oxford University in the 1980s and has since grown into a high-tech commercial organisation. To date, Oxford Cryosystems products have contributed to advances in fields as diverse as pharmaceuticals, telecoms, green energy and astronomy. Customers include universities, high-tech manufacturers, drugs companies and research institutes throughout the world. More than 80% of production is currently exported, whilst at least 90% of the company’s suppliers are British-based. For more information, visit www.oxcryo.com.