News from WA Products Scene of Crime & Forensic Consumables

LGC Forensics' new gunshot residue (GSR) evidence collection kits offer Police better value
LGC Forensics helps advance gunshot residue collection at crime scenes

LGC Forensics, the UK's leading independent forensic science provider, together with WA Products UK (www.waproducts.co.uk), a highly trusted supplier to the UK forensic industry, is pleased to announce the introduction of two new advanced gunshot residue (GSR) evidence collection kits. The new LGC Forensics-branded kits are contamination-free, easier to use and more cost-effective than previous designs, offering cost-savings to police forces.

One of the kits is designed for use on individuals and the other for use at scenes. LGC Forensics helped design and develop the kits in conjunction with WA Products, who will roll out the kits for use by UK police forces.

Both the Subject and Vehicle/Scene of Crime GSR kits contain adhesive stubs that are easy to use in the field, more effective at recovering GSR than swab kits and - because they require less processing before analysis than tapes - are faster to analyse. Quality assurance testing ensures every batch is contamination-free. The GSR kits have been specifically designed for processing on LGC Forensics' laboratory equipment; this compatibility means reduced processing times, thus creating cost savings for police forces that use the new kits.

Steve Allen, Managing Director of LGC Forensics, commented: "The development of these two new GSR evidence collection kits yet again demonstrates LGC Forensics' commitment to the development of high quality and modern forensic science techniques. The science of forensics is progressing rapidly and LGC Forensics is proud to play its part in the development of quality products and services, while also finding ways to reduce costs for the UK's Police forces".

Mike Hopson, Managing Director of WA Products, added: "Working with LGC Forensics has been a valuable collaboration. We have combined LGC Forensics' scientific expertise with our manufacturing excellence to produce two significantly enhanced kits that will be of benefit to our Police customers and will help improve crime-solving".

Sales enquiries should be directed to Stuart Wiseman at WA Products Tel: +44(0)1621 786654

DEW 25/02/2010

Clean room & validation
The 3 separate clean rooms at our new facility have just been validated and have now been rated at ISO class 6 (this is equivalent to the old Federal Standard 209E Class 1000 or BS5295 1989 standard Class H) which gives a particle count of 1000 parts per million. This is a higher standard than the original Class 6 validation at our old premises. Additionally, clean room No. 1 comfortably achieved ISO class 5 validation (which gives a particle count of 100 parts per million). . Combined with regular surface cleaning and very high levels of internal housekeeping, we feel that it is unlikely to find a cleaner clean room specific to our industry and invite inspection from any prospective or existing clients who may wish to prove our claims..

DEW 30/01/10

GL Scanner Update
19 scanners have now been installed in the UK. (We are still the world leader)

All Systems Go for March 12th 2010 (extended to the end of March due to bad weather)
Work on our second building commences at the end of this week for the construction of additional 20,000 square feet of warehousing.

Warehouse #1 which is of a similar size was only finished at the end of 2005 but is virtually full to capacity. In addition we have also recently taken over 2 smaller units on a short term lease so for these reasons our expansion plans have been pulled forward to commence work on the new warehouse building #2 straight away.

The new high bay warehouse will incorporate state of the art goods handling systems and give us the much needed space we require with over 1,400 pallet parking bays.

Warehouse extension
Due to continuing rapid expansion both in the UK and overseas, we have now moved forward Phase 2 of our warehouse project. In the last few weeks there has been a site survey to map the ground levels and trial boreholes for soil investigation.
We anticipate draft plans shortly and hope to start building this year.
The intention is to build an additional 10,000 square foot bulk store to accommodate our increased product range. This will also help work towards our pledge of being able to deliver next day to all our UK customers.

Land Acquisition
Due to our continued expansion, and after only 3 years at our new purpose built facility, our stock holding and product range has increased so dramatically that available storage space is now an issue!
After utilising all of our available space to its greatest potential, we realized that we would out grow our present premises much sooner than anticipated. To ensure our continued levels of service are not compromised we have acquired an additional freehold site next door to our existing facility.

During 2009 / 10 this site will be fully developed to increase our warehouse / distribution facilities by over 35% to ensure continuity of supply as well as increase our on-site cleanrooms and lab space as well as the development of our new fingerprint powder processing facility.

Catalogue
The latest WA Products catalogue has now been produced and distributed to Police and security professionals.
The new catalogue is 232 pages, which is over double the previous catalogue and laid out similar to our website for greater clarity. We have decided not to date the catalogue but change the colour with each new edition (blue), thus enabling us to determine which catalogue our customers are using.

GLScanner
The GLScanner for whom we are the UK Distributor, has been on loan all over the UK
Having purchased our own Demo Unit we have been able to place it on loan for evaluation to a number of forces.
There is approximately a one month waiting list to have the Demonstration unit.
It has been widely acclaimed by all users for it's versatility in recovering footprints, fingerprints and indented writing, (we have even taken fingerprints off a mug washed in a dishwasher)
Generally speaking various business cases have been shown to have a pay back period of eighteen months according to use.
It enables the photographic department to process more prints in less time, leaving them available to deal with more cases than at present. There have been 13 scanners installed throughout the UK, making the UK the single largest user of this excellent equipment.