QUALITY CONTROL
Made to measure laboratories
In 1995 Claudia and Robert Karl risked self-employment in a sector already dominated by experts. Those manufacturers, however, sold standardised products. The Karls, with backing from a stainless steel producer, decided to produce tailor-made solutions to fit customers’ needs. To that end they attended international medical equipment exhibitions from Dubai through to Malaysia. Today, Claudia Karl believes entrepreneurial thinking and attention to customers’ needs established their success.
In the ’90s a friendship with a pathologist from Nijmegen, the Netherlands helped to optimise their products. By 1996 their company, Kugel, based in Regensburg, Germany, fully equipped a newly built forensic centre in Budweis, Czech Republic. ‘There was a lot of backlog demand after the Iron Curtain fell,’ Robert Karl observed.
Their product range contains almost everything for a modern laboratory and the portfolio expansion continues to expand, with a focus on various tables. ‘Our specialties are the integrated exhaust units for dissection and autopsy tables. We also offer a complete range of stainless steel furniture, morgue refrigeration units and transport and storage equipment.’
Robert Karl is increasingly asked to take over the entire laboratory planning, so the firm is not only a supplier but also planner. Kugel’s customers include histopathology labs, forensic centres, universities, hospitals, anatomy institutes and pharmaceutical firms plus veterinary pathologists. The firm has 130 international partners and 85% of its products are exported to 72 countries, including those in Europe, the Middle East, Russia, Asia and Australia.
‘This year, Kugel medical celebrates its 20-year anniversary – for which Robert and Claudia Karl issued a statement that it is ‘an anniversary that we are very proud of and which motivates us even more to develop and manufacture state-of-the-art solutions for our customers around the world.’
24.04.2015
