Sentek Ltd is delighted to announce its sponsorship of the kit for the Great Bradfords Under 9 Emeralds football team for the upcoming season. The Emeralds, formed in January 2024, are part of the rapidly expanding youth girls’ teams at Great Bradfords Football Club. This partnership reflects Sentek Ltd’s commitment to supporting grassroots sports and promoting inclusivity and enjoyment for young athletes.

The Emeralds boast a solid core of enthusiastic Year 3 and Year 4 girls who are joined by new additions this summer, all ready to tackle the challenges of the new season. After competing in 5-a-side matches in the Essex County Girls League last season, the team is set to make an exciting move to 7-a-side football. This transition marks a significant milestone in their footballing journey.

The team’s ethos centres around togetherness and teamwork, creating a supportive environment where players and parents work hand-in-hand to nurture skills, confidence, and a love for the game. Manager Gareth Heard shared his thoughts on the team:

“The team have a great foundation of both parents and players who tirelessly support the team and each other on their footballing journey. Our ethos is togetherness and teamwork, and we promote inclusivity and enjoyment for girls to play football.”

Paul Cook, Managing Director of Sentek Ltd, expressed his support for the team, saying:

“We’re proud to sponsor the Great Bradfords Under 9 Emeralds. It’s fantastic to see such a positive environment for young players to enjoy football and develop their skills.”

The sponsorship will run for a 2-year period and will provide the girls with a full training kit and raincoats. The training kit will be worn to all training sessions, currently held on Tuesdays and Saturdays, while the raincoats will be worn to training sessions and to matches on Sundays as well.

Sentek Ltd wishes the Emeralds the very best for their upcoming matches and is proud to be part of their journey!

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New Look For Sentek Electrodes

Available to pre-order today, next generation sensors offer updated features that draw on the years of hands-on experience that have shaped the electrode cap and refill seal, all whilst maintaining the same affordable price.

When we introduced the Sentek blue and orange cap in 1998, it’s striking colour and original shape was a fresh approach to lab and testing equipment that could, at times, be somewhat samey. Through innovative geometry and material experiences, the team at Sentek created something that was reassuringly reliable and enjoyable to use.

Whether used for testing biological samples in a laboratory, monitoring pH in a brewery, or the measurement of soil conductivity, the electrodes, and their striking cap design, brought the dependable experience that we expect from Sentek at an incredible price point. This has always been the purpose of Sentek’s electrodes, and now the product is only getting better.

Meet the next generation sensors by Sentek Ltd

We’re delighted to announce a new look for Sentek’s electrodes. This product has been meticulously crafted to deliver our Sentek signature premium feel and features in a sleek new design. Refillable electrodes are ready to use straightaway without the need to refill or remove dried Kcl solution through zero-leakage technology on a fully remodelled refill seal.

Materials have been a defining characteristic of our product design. From the robust ABS barrel to the flexible, durable properties of TPE, we’ve focused on creating a reliable solution that is easy to maintain.

Whilst fashioning a beautiful product we are also committed to practicality. In addition to being a perfect fit for standard electrode holders, the key range of electrodes will now feature sensor information and specification conveniently displayed on the electrode stem for easy identification.

These enhancements continue to demonstrate the team’s commitment to detail and to you, blending form and function so that you can carry out vital research, routine measurements or lessons in a chemistry classroom. We are delighted to offer next generation electrodes at the same great price.

“We’re thrilled to be launching this exciting new product upgrade which provides our customers with a stylish and reliable sensor” said Kenny Petrie, Sentek’s founder and Technical Director. “At our core, we constantly strive to provide our customers with exceptional quality at a reasonable price, and the features of this new design achieves just that.”

Contact the Sentek team at www.sentek.co.uk/contact to pre-order today. Orders will begin shipping in 2024 and the new look cap and refill seal will be applied to the Sentek branded range of electrode.

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Most Read Articles

Before we dive into 2023, we wanted to look back and revisit some of our most popular news articles from last year. We covered many topics on our blog in 2022, from the launch of our all-new website to tips on how to choose the correct conductivity electrode.

Read on for a summary of our 5 most popular blogs from last year.

#1 Coming Soon! Stay tuned for our all-new website. In January, we celebrated the launch of our all-new website. A full overhaul of the site is designed with an intuitive layout, increased range of products, and enhanced functionality to make it easier for users to find what they need, quickly. Read more >

#2 The Use of Disposable and Non-Disposable pH Sensors in Medicine Production. Monitoring and controlling pH is critical to biopharmaceutical manufacturing to ensure the quality and yield of the final product. In this article we look at the use of single-use or disposable bioprocessing equipment. Learn more >

#3 Introducing a new look for Sentek electrodes. Exciting news! We’re launching a sleek new cap design and an innovative zero-leakage refill seal – no more dried KCl solution! The next generation design will be rolled out across the range of sensors, including pH, reference, conductivity and ISE electrodes. Read more >

#4 Choosing a Conductivity Electrode. Choosing the right conductivity electrode is important to ensure that the right product is being used to give the most accurate readings. In this informative article, we cover the factors to consider when choosing a sensor, as well as application advice when using the probe. Learn more >

#5 The Importance of Lab Testing for Food Products. Here we answer the question ‘Why is laboratory testing for beverages and food products essential?’, exploring how pH affects food and outline some food testing processes. Learn more >

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NEW WEBSITE

Sentek is proud to announce the launch of our new, fully-featured website www.sentek.co.uk later this month.

Our site reflects our 2021/22 brand refresh and showcases the best of Sentek and our experience and in-depth know-how to ensure our clients reliable and versatile electrochemical sensor solutions.

We wanted to make the new website faster with an intuitive layout that is more user-friendly. We’ve increased our range of online products making it quicker and easier to browse and order items online. Along with an Enquiry Basket function simplifying the request for more information on multiple items or to specify requirements before ordering.

We’ve simplified navigation and enhanced visual imagery. Combined with improved, clearly visible specification content and filtering options allowing customers to find what they need, quickly. Explore the sites new Download Centre, full of technical resources and advice, as well as How To videos and guides. Find answers to your questions, learn more about your sensors, and maybe even discover a few hints and tips.

We hope you find the new website fresh and modern; we worked hard to make sure it is designed to assist our customers in making well-informed decisions about purchases as well as electrode after-care and access to technical support.

Paul Cook, Managing Director at Sentek Ltd is delighted with the new website: “The redesigned website has a new look and improved functionality to ensure an easier and more engaging experience for our users. It is now much easier to view not just our core range of accurate and reliable pH, conductivity, ISE and DO2 sensors, but our ability to work with our clients to create custom sensors designed and built specially for their individual requirements. The improved news and insights section contains informative articles giving insight into electrode uses and best practice, as well as the latest updates from the Sentek Team.”

Sentek is proud to be the UK’s largest independent electrochemical sensor company with over 50,000 units produced monthly. And after 3 decades, we are still supplying sensors to our first customers from 30 years ago, a true testimony to the quality of our products and the reliability of our service.

But it doesn’t stop there. The site, which is launching at the end of January, will continually be updated with a wider range of products to shop online, even more technical insights and resources, and the opportunity to find out more about the spectacular team at Sentek Ltd.

To keep up to date with the launch, blogs posts and exclusive offers, signup to our newsletter.

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A Note from Sentek’s Founder and Technical Director

Today Sentek Ltd is in a position of strength due to our ongoing commitment to offering flexibility to our customers in the areas of design, innovation and chemical support and the proven ability to excel and grow in the face of one of the toughest years’ the world has had to endure.

In deciding who should take the business forward, we wanted someone with the right mix of business acumen, organisational skills, and industry experience. With that in mind I am extremely pleased to announce we have appointed Paul Cook as Managing Director.

Paul Cook joined Sentek in 2004 in the role of Customer Service Manager and quickly became a great resource for the company in all areas of the business operation. He was promoted to the board of the company in early 2017 in the role of Operations Director, during this time he has grown the business and built on the company’s success.

Now in his new role as Managing Director, Paul’s focus will be continuing the growth Sentek has seen over the last 30 years and securing business’s position as the UK’s number one manufacturer of electrochemical sensors, providing high quality products in a diverse range of markets and applications.

Looking forward to his new role, Paul has said “Having worked at Sentek for 17 years, it is a privilege and an honour to be able to take this tremendous company forward, to continue to offer world class products to our Customers and to guide the extremely talented and professional team within Sentek. I am looking forward to maintaining the high standards within Sentek and am indebted to Ken and Mike for entrusting me with the Managing Director Role. I am truly excited to see what we can achieve together in the coming years and to continue the success that Sentek has attained over the last 30 years.”

In addition, I welcome this opportunity to share the outstanding support Sam Bryant has demonstrated over the past five years’ as General Manager and recently during an extremely volatile period in Sentek’s history.

Samantha Bryant joined Sentek in 2000 gaining experience initially as a Personal Assistant to the Managing Director and Sales Director. Sam has since worked in every manufacturing, procurement and management role within in company, giving her the ultimate knowledge of Sentek’s products and processes.

Sam’s tremendous contribution has been her ability to learn fast and take on new challenges and responsibilities with ease. Sam took over from Donna as General Manager in January 2017 and has protected the foundation of collaboration, communication, and customer satisfaction Donna created as Co-Founder of Sentek. I want to thank Sam for her extraordinary contributions to Sentek and her support in the months and years ahead.

Please join me in congratulating Paul on his new role, and thanking Sam for her continued and exceptional support over the past 22 years.

As Sentek moves forward out of a turbulent 18 months, along with the rest of the country, we can reflect on those that have worked tirelessly to ensure the business emerges stronger than ever. Our Production Manager, Josh Hammond, has demonstrated the ability to cultivate talent and develop a world-class production operation under the most challenging of circumstances. I would like to thank him and everyone in his team for their outstanding support.

Sentek has also seen some changes to the Administration department with the appointment of Anna Brown as Sales and Marketing Administrator, and Bethany Benns replacing Chelsie Plumb in Customer Service. Chelsie has done stellar work for the company and has worked with Beth over the past weeks to ensure a smooth transition for our clients. I wish her well in her new endeavours.

I will continue my role as Technical Director, overseeing the development of bespoke electrodes, and ensuring Sentek continues to innovate and deliver first-class products to our clients as we have done for the past 30 years.

Sentek will continue to grow its home and export markets with the expansion of our research and development team. We also look forward to launching an extensive range of new products in the coming years, watch this space!

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Sentek Are Local Youth Football Team sponsors

Sentek Ltd is proud to become the kit sponsor for Dunmow Rovers Youth F.C Under 12’s Team for the 2021/22 season.

The Club, based only minutes from Sentek’s head office premises in Braintree, Essex, has been established since 1976. It is an organisation run by volunteers who provide football to boys and girls from the age of 4 years to players at senior level. The under 12’s Team is one of 30 teams run at the Club which have between them, approximately 200 plus playing members. The Club strives to be a safe, welcoming environment for young football players to develop their skills and Sentek Ltd is thrilled to support this grassroots football club as their kit sponsors.

“We are very pleased to be a new kit sponsor for the Under 12’s Team at Dunmow Rovers Youth Football Club…” comments Paul Cook, Operations Director at Sentek Ltd. “…it’s important to us that we support the local community and local projects, especially one like DRYFC that provides so many benefits to young people. We wish them every success for the forthcoming season and are looking forward to supporting the Team from the side lines and from the Sentek offices nearby.”

As a kit sponsor, Sentek’s logo will be displayed on the Team’s away kit this upcoming season.

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Q & A With Kenneth Petrie – Sentek’s Founder

How did you become involved in the electrochemical sensor industry?

I started in the electrochemistry industry as a scientific glassblower in Fife, I took a real interest in the product, and learned all about it. Working for the people that were the best in the business, these guys were all in their 40s and 50s when I was just 20, they had been about for a long time, and they taught me everything there was to know about electrochemical sensors.

I got promoted through the company quite quickly and was put on the board when I was in my 20s, I got really ambitious and wanted to do it myself, so I left and formed Sentek. Craig our head glassblower came with me.

What led you down the path of entrepreneurship?

My thing was that I really wanted to be independent, I think I just wanted to be in control.

Before I started Sentek, I moved to a new job which I wasn’t happy in, so I resigned. Having already moved house there was only one thing to do… set up a new business on my own! After 6 months, my partner Donna stopped working for other people and we both worked together to build the company up.

I decided to leave that firm in Ireland in December 1990, and we formed Sentek in January in 1991, in Fife, then we moved to Essex in October 1992. We felt we have to be close to Cambridge and this area as a lot of the lab companies are in this area, and the Cambridge science parks. It’s like being in the Finance world, if you want to do that, get close to London. We used to call it the Golden Triangle around here.

We started producing conductivity electrodes, but as the holes in the market were appearing following the recession in the early 1990s, with other companies going under, we started filling those holes by producing pH electrodes as well.

What have you learned about yourself running your business?

One thing I did learn when I first started it up – I thought I knew everything. After a few years I thought I knew less and less every month! When you’re in your 20’s and in business, you’re confident, but then you realise that you need great people around you to succeed. No one person has the answers to everything.

I did find that it was very difficult to get the right human resources in place; we could get orders, design great products, but it was very difficult to attract the staff and retain them. It’s harder for a small firm, as you don’t have as much of the financial resources as large organisations.

We made sure we hired self-starters that were passionate about the industry, and gave our employees more autonomy to put forward and ideas and suggestions to improve products and processes. That’s a culture that is still here today.

I also learnt to be flexible. In the beginning I wanted to sell Sentek branded electrodes only, that had to change. They say, “No battle plan ever survives engagement with the enemy.” And so, we were flexible and changed to suit the times by selling custom electrodes to OEMs and other clients… if we’d have stuck to our guns, the business would not be where it is today.

If you had a time machine, what would you do differently?

I think if I could turn the clock back, I wouldn’t have spent so many hours in here. Donna and I spent a massive amount of time here, too many hours. We were having good fun at the time, but being here at 2am isn’t a life. When you set up a business it becomes the only thing in your life, it is all you think about, complete immersion.

Donna was so thorough and accurate in everything she did, because she wanted it to be perfect. While that meant that we were working all hours, it did earn us a reputation for being uber-accurate in our products and our pricing.

What do you consider your smartest business idea?

Hiring a professional, high-profile Sales and Marketing Director. Joe Wheeler was a top salesperson in the sector, so when I asked him about coming to work for me, I expected him to pat me on the head and say shoo! So to say I was surprised when he accepted is an understatement.

Customers and competitors started talking, “who’s Joe gone to work for?”, “where is Joe working now?”, and just like that, our turnover increased by 30% in the first two years, it took off.

It may have been a smart decision for the business, but the reality was that I paid Joe more than I paid myself and gave him my company car so he could visit customers. – And I would do it again in a heartbeat.

What are you most proud of achieving at Sentek Ltd?

The fact that the company has always been financially stable and has always grown. And the new team continuing its growth. Sam, Paul and Craig, they’ve been here a long time and they’re making it work. It is great to see.

The team we have here are simply incredible. Nothing beats a person for what we do here, no machine can build what we build. There’s pride in that, knowing that I know the people that make these special products, it gives me a huge amount of pride.

In so many companies, when they are sold, they go wrong. The owners may want to change processes or personnel, but we haven’t experienced that with SDI Group. Since 2015, they have supported us where we needed support, and have let us do our thing as we have been doing for 30 years now.

What interests you outside of work?

Music is a huge part of life for me. I play guitar in a band; I’ve done that all my life. I play piano and played the trumpet for a while. I used to play organ in church.

We were playing at the weekend in Braintree, it was beautiful sunshine, the place was rammed. Its great fun, bloody brilliant [shows an online video of the show; it’s a sunset set and he’s playing Running Down a Drain by Tom Petty… then he fast forwards to him playing a face melting guitar solo!].

I like boating, being out on the water. I have a river boat, a Bermuda 34 broads cruiser, which we would take on the rivers and waterways around North Norfolk, it’s beautiful around there.

Tell us something people would be surprised to learn about you…

I also play the bagpipes! Bagpipes was the first instrument I learned at the age of 7 and I played in a pipe band.

It’s not as difficult as you might think, you’re just topping the air up when you’re blowing. You can sometimes hear them winding up like a scalded cat, and that’s when someone hasn’t got the proper pressure. It’s like a violin, if you don’t handle it properly it can be… rough!

Music is a big part of my life; it always has been.

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