When did you last think about your laboratory freezer running costs? Do you know how much a typical -80°C freezer costs you to operate and maintain each year? In addition to the initial cost of buying the freezer and the annual energy and servicing costs, there are also hidden costs to consider. These include:
- Ventilation – increased costs to site HVAC to properly dissipate the heat generated by the compressors
- Footprint - laboratory space costs money.
Do you think you are making the most efficient use of the freezers in your lab? Or might your freezers actually contain a small amount of what you actually need and a large amount of expired, outdated or redundant materials?
When you run out of room in your freezers, do you just buy a new freezer? Or do you embark on a project to try and rationalize your inventory materials to make more room?
To do this efficiently, you will need a good accounting of what is in your freezer to determine which items are valuable for you to keep, and what materials can be disposed of. That isn’t necessarily easy to do. In many cases, scientists will actually have to go through the arduous task of emptying out and defrosting the freezer just to get a proper accounting of its contents.
Well, here are the cold, hard facts: One standard -80°C laboratory freezer consumes around 6900 kWh of electricity each year. Add on to that the cost of maintenance, facilities impacts, depreciation – this can add up to a significant investment! The University of Edinburgh's report on best practice for cold storage has calculated you could make the following savings, even before recent energy price rises:
- Save space by clearing out old samples (up to £1,000/year saving for every ULT freezer you can retire)
- Replace old freezers (up to £400/year saving per freezer)
- Defrost freezers regularly (around £200/year saving per freezer)
- Run your freezers a little warmer (up to £300/year saving per freezer)
With Mosaic software, efficient management of freezer inventories is simple, economical, and allows you to make the most effective use of the freezers in your lab. Since Mosaic tracks all of your container locations, you’ll always know where all of your materials are as well as where space is available for new items to be placed. Best of all, you won’t have to dig through each laboratory freezer to find what you are looking for since you never lose track of any of your samples! This can result in additional cost savings.
Consider how much the following could be costing you:
- Cumulative employee time wasted searching for samples plus delays to research due to disorganised storage space
- Redundant purchases of items that were perhaps already available in your storage, but not easily found because there is no simple inventory query tool
- Out of date samples taking up freezer space
This blog is expanded on in Cenevo's extensive white paper: The Essential Guide to Laboratory Sample Management, which reviews the challenges facing sample managers in a life sciences organization.
Get in touch with our team for more information, click 'Book a Demo' below!
*Originally published on www.titian.co.uk
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