Second generation family business, Bedfont® goes through to the final round of the KEiBA for 2 categories
The Kent Excellence in Business Awards (KEiBA) is an annual awards
ceremony organised by Kent County Council and KM Media Group. Now in its
9th year, the awards were established to recognise and reward
excellence and achievements by companies across Kent. Out of 16
categories, this year saw 312 entries for KEiBA. Based in Harrietsham,
Kent, Bedfont® has specialised in the design and manufacture of breath
and gas analysis monitors for medical application for over 40 years. As
the finalists were announced at KENT Vision Live yesterday, Bedfont® was
pleased to be named as a finalist in 2 of the categories it applied
for; Medium Business of the Year and Exporter of the Year.
Jason Smith, managing director, comments,
“With Kent being rich in companies who are paving
the way into the future, and with there being more KEiBA entries this
year than ever before, Bedfont® is humbled to have been chosen as
finalists for Medium Business of the Year and Exporter of the Year. We
look forward to the gala dinner in June to see who will win – good luck
to all finalists in all 16 categories”.
Second generation family business, Bedfont®, shows it has family values at its core with their progressive kids club for employees
Bedfont®, based in Harrietsham, is a small family-run business that
specialises in the design and manufacture of breath and gas analysis
monitors for medical application. For 3 years now, Bedfont® has provided
employees with a ‘kids club’ that has been helping their staff to
maintain a healthy work-life balance; a factor which makes the small
company of 39 a very progressive and desirable company to work for.
Bedfont’s latest statistics show that 73% of the workforce consists
of members aged 35 and under, meaning a high majority of staff are
parents with young children.
Jason Smith, managing director, says, “On a few
occasions half the business needed time off to look after their children
during the holidays, meaning holiday was being used solely to take care
of children instead of being used for other leisure. This meant that at
times business would be an operational nightmare but so would people’s
work life-balance; parents had to alternate weeks off from work and
therefore the time allocated for them to spend together as a family is
seriously diminished, additionally the added pressure of trying to
balance work duties whilst trying to find the time to look after your
children during the holidays is something I know all too well as a
parent of 2 myself. We decided to allocate an annual budget for the kids
club, whereby staff can bring their children to work for one week in
each of the school holidays and then Bedfont® funds the requisite number
of professional DBS checked nannies required. To start, my own home was
used as their operating base but now we have part of the Bedfont®
premises converted for these weeks, however they actually spend much of
their time in the locality at various low-cost attractions such as Leeds
Castle, Kent Life, Adventure Kids, Whitstable and much more.”
Claire Dadswell adds, “All the children are cared
for by DBS checked nannies with myself in charge; I am NNEB trained with
paediatric first aid and have over 23 years of experience as a nanny.
We try and do one trip out alongside lots of arts and crafts which all
the children love. The youngest child is 1.5 years old and the eldest is
12, so we find activities that are fun, educative and suit all ages. We
also provide all children with healthy snacks and lunches, plus we are
lucky enough to have a gymnastics coach on our team who will
occasionally teach a session with kids to keep them active.”
Student study in America verifies the effectiveness of the Smokerlyzer® motivational traffic-light system when encouraging smokers to quit.
Barren
County High School seniors Taryn Kerley and Becca Calvert recently
conducted a study with a Smokerlyzer® carbon monoxide (CO) monitor and
found that smokers are more likely to want to quit after seeing their CO
levels.
The study called “Effects of Education and Exhaled Carbon Monoxide
Testing on Smoking Cessation in a Rural Kentucky Community” looked at 30
people ranging in age from 16 to 50+ and found “there was a significant
difference in the desire to quit smoking from before they saw their
(carbon monoxide) level to after they saw their carbon monoxide level”
said Calvert.
The Smokerlyzer® measures the harmful amount of CO that is inhaled
from smoking, which can show how much a patient has been smoking, giving
smoking cessation advisors an idea on the level of dependency that the
smoker has. The Smokerlyzer® is quick, non-invasive and the traffic
light system also acts as a motivational visual aid to encourage the
user to quit smoking and to measure their progress whilst doing so. Red
indicates a regular smoker with higher levels of CO in their blood,
amber would indicate a light smoker, whilst green is the reading of a
non-smoker and the ultimate aim.
The carbon monoxide from smoking damages the lining of your
arteries, which can lead to angina, a heart attack, a stroke and
Buerger’s disease[1,2]. It is also the biggest contributable factor to
Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder (COPD), thought to be responsible
for around 90% of cases[3]. Additionally smoking can cause up to 14
types of cancer[4], most significantly lung cancer, of which deaths are
the leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide, with cigarette smoking
accounting for 80% of lung cancer deaths in men and 50% in women[5].
Cigarette smoking is responsible for more than 480,000 deaths per year
in the United States, including more than 41,000 deaths resulting from
second-hand smoke exposure. This is about one in five deaths annually,
or 1,300 deaths every day[6].
Jason Smith, managing director at Bedfont®, the UK-based company
who manufactures the Smokerlyzer®, comments, “It’s really great to see
the Smokerlyzer® getting noticed overseas – 80% of our sales are from
exporting and the Smokerlyzer®, which is one of our core breath analysis
products, has helped thousands of people quit smoking worldwide for
over 30 years now. Hopefully the benefits of the Smokerlyzer® will
continue to be recognised so that it can help people quit smoking, one
breath at a time.”
Second generation family company, Bedfont®, based in Harrietsham, picks up trophy for Exporter of the year 2017 at the Kent Invicta Chamber of Commerce Awards
On Thursday 30th March 2017, the Kent Invicta Chamber of Commerce
hosted its prestigious awards evening at the Canterbury Cathedral Lodge,
where Bedfont®, a small family business of less than 40 people, picked
up the sought after Exporter of the year 2017 award.
Established in 1976, Bedfont® is a second generation family company
that specialises in the design and manufacture of breath and gas
analysis equipment, with its wide range of products now found in over 70
countries worldwide.
Andy Smith, sales manager, explains, “Bedfont®
operates through a network of distributors, of which the first ever
distributor was appointed in 1988 by our father Trevor Smith. In fact,
that relationship continues still today between myself and the
distributor’s daughter. It is more than a business arrangement; we see
our distributors as an extension of the Bedfont® family and it this
great relationship that enables us to continue expanding our reach
globally.”
Jason Smith, managing director, adds, “We are very
proud and grateful to accept the accolade Exporter of the year 2017
from the KICC. I’d like to dedicate this award to the Bedfont® family,
who is not only my biological family, but the hardworking staff at
Bedfont® and our distributors, without whom we would not be here today.”
Second generation family company, Bedfont®, based in Harrietsham, picks up trophy for Exporter of the year 2017 at the Kent Invicta Chamber of Commerce Awards
New year, new face and new brand for Bedfont® as Jason Smith, new managing director, is shaking things up for the 40 year old company.
Bedfont®, established in 1976, has specialised in the design and
manufacture of exhaled breath and gas analysis products since before
Jason was born. However, now he has succeeded his father, Trevor, as
managing director, Jason feels that it’s the ideal time to update the
brand, to reflect recent changes and Bedfont’s future .
The reason for the rebrand is that 2016 was a big year for Bedfont®
which led to a lot of developments within the business and we sold our
NOxBOX range of intensive care units to focus on our core business of
breath analysis as well as celebrating 40 years of business.
Jason comments, “As we focus more on breath
analysis, having sold the intensive care range, we have changed a bubble
from green to purple to represent our NObreath® FeNO monitor which is
helping to improve asthma management. We have also included our
establishment date because even though we want the world to see how new
and innovative our ideas are, we still want them to know that we’ve been
a long-standing established company, since 1976.
More significant than the logo with this rebrand is the new slogan, “Our family, innovating health, for yours.”
Again, we feel that it is crucial that the rebrand reflects our core
values and purpose as a company and we feel this slogan does exactly
that. What is important about this new slogan is that we are still
innovating health, that is not changing, but we are expanding. The
Bedfont® family is not just the Smith family, but all of our dedicated
employees and distributors and we all share the same goal of providing
the best service and products to improve healthcare worldwide.”
The piCObaby™ Smokerlyzer® from Bedfont® Scientific Ltd. offers a quick and non-invasive method of measuring the CO levels of both the mums-to-be and their babies to help them quit smoking.
Figures released from the Women’s Smoking Status at Time of Delivery:
England, published by the Health & Social Care Information Centre
(HSCIC), showed that although the number of women smoking whilst
pregnant fell between 2014/15 and 2015/16, the 2015/16 figures still
show that 10.6% of mothers were recorded as still smoking at the time of
delivery. Bedfont®, who manufacture the renowned Smokerlyzer® used for
smoking cessation, manufacture a version called the piCObaby™
Smokerlyzer® which is specifically designed to help pregnant smokers
quit, and also shows the foetal CO calculation.
With the new year being the perfect time to quit smoking, concerns
about smoking whilst pregnant have been highlighted significantly. Even
Chief Executive of Public Health England, Duncan Selbie, recently
recommended that all pregnant mums be CO screened when they book a
hospital appointment and amidst fears that mothers don’t truly recognise
the harm smoking whilst pregnant has to their unborn child 1.
Carbon monoxide (CO) is inhaled from smoking and replaces the
oxygen in your blood, effectively starving your organs of oxygen which
can lead to several health complications 2. Smoking whilst pregnant can
pass on these detrimental effects to your unborn child and cause serious
pregnancy-related health problems, such as complications during labour,
an increased risk of miscarriage, premature birth, still birth, low
birth-weight and sudden unexpected death in infancy 3.
Jason Smith, managing director at Bedfont®, explains, “The
Smokerlyzer® is effective because when people blow into the monitor,
the traffic light system provides a visual motivational aid as to the
amount of CO in a smoker’s body and therefore provides a warning about
the harm they are doing to themselves by continuing to smoke. The
piCObaby™ not only does this, but also shows the foetal calculation and
therefore the potential harm that a pregnant smoker could be having on
her unborn child too.”
“CO breath testing with the Smokerlyzer® has been used by stop
smoking clinics worldwide for over 30 years now. What makes it so
popular with patients and stop smoking clinics is that it is much
quicker than more conventional methods of CO testing, such as a blood
test, but also it is more patient-friendly because it is completely
non-invasive. We hope that if more mums-to-be know about this easier way
of CO screening or if they need a little extra help to quit smoking
whilst pregnant, they will opt to have a CO breath test with the
piCObaby™ to help them quit, for their health and their unborn baby’s.”
Local exporter, Bedfont® Scientific, donates £500 to BBC Children in Need to support disadvantaged children throughout the UK
Bedfont® Scientific is proud to announce that it is donating £500 to
BBC Children in Need after filming its very own #MannequinChallenge to
support the appeal. The money raised will go on to help transform the
lives of disadvantaged children and young people across the UK.
The #MannequinChallenge is a concept which has gone viral on social
media. The idea is that people are filmed while they hold a pose, like
mannequins. Bedfont’s version saw all of its employees frozen in place
as the camera pans around its 2 offices. Bedfont’s aim was to have the
video of their #MannequinChallenge liked and shared on social media in
order to raise the money to be donated.
Bedfont® Scientific, based in Harrietsham, Kent, specialises in the
manufacture of breath analysis devices for medical application. Their
most famous product is the Smokerlyzer® which can be found in stop
smoking clinics across the UK, helping people quit smoking. As a
company, they partake in several fundraising events throughout the year,
but it is their first time fundraising for BBC Children in Need.
Natasha Smith, marketing manager, comments,
“It was a very successful video and we
had a lot of fun making it. By midnight, just fewer than 300 people
reacted and we had over 11,000 people viewing the video, which keeps
increasing. We are so thankful to everyone who took part and it is a
great feeling to be able to donate £500 to help the disadvantaged
children and young people across the UK.”
Local medical device manufacturer, Bedfont® Scientific, accepts the Mannequin Challenge to help raise money for Children in Need.
The
Mannequin Challenge is a concept which has gone viral on social media.
The idea is that people are filmed while they hold a pose, like
mannequins. Local medical device manufacturer, Bedfont® Scientific, have
decided to join the hype but with one twist; if their video gets 10,000
shares on Facebook, they will donate £1,000 to Children in Need which
is taking place tonight.
Children in Need, established in 1980, is the BBC’s UK charity
which has raised over £600 million for disabled children and young
people in the UK.
Jason Smith, Managing Director, says,
“Whilst all good fun to plan and film the mannequin challenge, we do
hope that by making this video we can help spread the word about the
BBC’s good work through the Children in Need charity. Sometimes it’s
good to pause and take stock of how lucky we are and that there are
children out there who need our help; with social media playing such a
huge part in life these days, we hope that our video will help people
realise this. Please do like and share our video which can be found on
our Facebook page, @Bedfontltd. We have pledged to give £1,000 to
Children in Need if we can reach over 10,000 likes before midnight!”
Bedfont® Scientific is proud to have passed its first unannounced BSI audit.
Bedfont®
Scientific, based in Harrietsham, Kent, is a medical device
manufacturer that specialises in breath analysis devices which are used
to help detect certain health conditions. As a medical company, there
are many compliances to adhere to, but they are pleased to announce they
have passed their very first unexpected audit.
The BSI, otherwise known as the British Standards Institution, is
the national standards body for the UK and implements technical
standards on a wide range of products and services. The BSI introduced
unannounced audits in April 2014, aiming to assure day-to-day compliance
of the manufacturer’s product and quality management systems.
Louise Bateman, QA & RA Manager, stated, “It
was a surprise but not something that worried us. Overall I’m very happy
with how the audit went and you can see at times like this how the
company is developing in all aspects and how hard the teams work to
enable us to sell medical products into the market”.
Trevor Smith, Chairman, adds, “This is truly good
news as we can use it as one of the barometers as to the “health” of the
Company. When the auditors turned up unexpected yesterday I happened to
be in reception. In the past an event like this would fill me with
nerves; however, I immediately felt at ease considering all the hard
work that has gone into our QA. This is nothing short of excellent! Hard
work and doing your very best always pays off eventually.”
Local company, Bedfont® Scientific, urges people to quit smoking with the Smokerlyzer® after latest figures from Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) find smoking still causes the majority of lung cancer deaths in the UK.
Lung
Cancer Awareness month approaches again in November 2016, in the hope
to make people aware of the facts and figures that can save people’s
lives. Bedfont® Scientific, based in Harrietsham, Kent, manufacturer of
the Smokerlyzer®, a breath carbon monoxide (CO) monitor used to help
people quit smoking, is encouraging people to quit the habit which
contributes to 86% of lung cancer deaths in men and 72% in women,
according to latest ASH statistics.
A staggering 81% of patients diagnosed with advanced lung cancer
die within a year and smoking is the single biggest preventable risk
factor of lung cancer.
A leading manufacturer of exhaled breath and gas monitoring
instruments, who in 2016 are celebrating two important anniversaries –
40 years in business and 30 years of one of their most successful
exports – the Smokerlyzer®, Bedfont® Scientific are revered as pioneers
in the medical gas analysis market.
Jason Smith, Managing Director at Bedfont® Scientific, comments,
“The Smokerlyzer® uses breath analysis to detect the harmful amount
of carbon monoxide (CO) in your lungs, and therefore your blood, that is
inhaled from smoking. Smoking builds high levels of CO in the blood,
which can lead to heart disease, circulation problems and high blood
pressure. For smoking cessation clinics, it is a way to establish a
smoker’s status whilst acting as a motivational visual aid to encourage
them to quit and to measure their progress whilst doing so, helping to
prevent cancer and other smoking related diseases.”
