Fridge and freezer temperature monitoring is essential to ensure that these areas are within temperature control specifications. The data loggers are set up to show an alarm when the specifications for the stored equipment are breached.

NRM Laboratories is part of Cawood Scientific Ltd, whose services cover all aspects of animal nutrition and health, crop production, horticulture, amenity grounds and environmental materials and renewables. They are the UK's largest independent provider of analytical laboratory testing services to 'land-based' industries, and are using Tinytag data loggers in several of the company's sites, including NRM.

The monitoring is essential to ensure that these storage areas are within specification, in order to comply with NRM's accreditation. At present nine Tinytag Talk 2 loggers monitor the temperature in specific fridges, freezers and walk-in cold rooms. They are set up to show an alarm when the specifications for the equipment are breached.

The loggers are checked daily to see if this red LED alarm has been triggered. If this is the case, the recorded data is downloaded and the results examined. From this information, an assessment can be made of what impact the temperature discrepancies would have on future analysis. For example, if it is a short-term dip in temperature, this will probably not have consequences for the quality of the materials stored in the fridge, whereas if the temperature has been too high over a prolonged period, materials may have degraded and so would need to be remade.

NRM's Compliance Manager chose Tinytag data loggers as a flexible tool to record data, rather than simply relying on observing that temperatures had gone out of specification over a 24hr period on the max-min thermometers that were used previously. The fact that the loggers can be individually programmed to varying parameters is an additional advantage.

Katie Dixon is NRM's Compliance Co-ordinator, responsible for working with the Compliance Manager on all aspects of Quality and Health & Safety. Katie comments, "We find Tinytag loggers are a flexible tool for enabling ongoing monitoring with useful information readily available. The format of the data also works well for allowing us to see trends and pinpoint problems."