How Benchmark Services has grown alongside the industry it serves.
In 2001, two men named Clive and Neil set up a small operation to move laboratory equipment. Two and a half decades later that operation has become a nationally recognised name that laboratories, hospitals, manufacturers and biotech start-ups trust with their most fragile and often most expensive equipment.
Clive Laing, Managing Director and Founder of Benchmark Services.
To mark the 25-year anniversary, we spoke to people who have watched the company grow from the inside and from the outside. Their stories trace a quiet but steady evolution, from a small two-man operation with a van, to a fully accredited specialist logistics provider which now serves some of the most demanding sectors in science and medicine.
The early days, with a van full of tools
Harry Page joined Benchmark in January 2002 as a driver/installer and stayed until 2014. He remembers a company that was still finding its feet, but one with a clear sense of what above average service looked like.
“I joined on January 5th, straight after the Christmas holidays. Clive and Neil had started the business and asked me to come on board, and I said I would love to,” he recalls.
“I really enjoyed the work from the start, especially installing equipment. Anyone can get a job as a driver, but installation is more involved.”
In those early years, the work took Harry and his colleagues across the country, often setting off in the early hours to reach jobs in places like North Manchester Hospital, Manchester University and Manchester Metropolitan University, as well as research stations further afield.
One job stands out in particular.
“My favourite work was at the cancer research hospital, where we installed around 90 per cent of the equipment, mainly freezers, incubators, Class II cabinets, and other scientific equipment,” he says.
“It was not cheap equipment, so you had to stay focused and make sure you had the right tools for the job.”
It was a job that relied heavily on practical skill and improvisation, particularly when equipment would not fit through a doorway or a lift was too small for the job at hand.
“One of the main challenges was when there was not a lift big enough and you had to get equipment up with a stairwalker,” Harry explains. “You had to trust the equipment and your own judgement. If there was ever a tool needed to get the job done, the company would just tell you to go and buy it, which showed how supportive they were.”
That early culture, small, hands on and trusting of its people, set the tone for everything that followed. Harry spent his first four months working largely on his own before a second installer, Aidy, joined the team.
“As time went on, we brought in more drivers and gained more customers, and the office started to take on more responsibility,” he says. “At the beginning, we dealt directly with customers ourselves, which meant if there was a problem, we had the time to sort it out properly.”
“First class” service
Asked what he thinks has kept Benchmark going for 25 years, Harry’s answer is simple. “It comes down to the level of service they provide. It really is first class, and they usually go above and beyond to achieve what they set out to do. They listened to their staff, including us drivers and installers, or as I like to call us, customer service specialists.”
In on the ground floor (2008 to 2010)
Mark Goddard, Founder of WG Healthcare
By the time Mark Goddard co-founded WG Healthcare in 2008, Benchmark had a reputation built on those early years of careful, hands-on work. Mark, who knew Clive socially, turned to Benchmark to handle something his fledgling MedTech company could not yet manage itself.
“We were a start-up MedTech Company and wanted to outsource our logistics and customer services,” he explains. “They provided customer service, warehousing and logistics support for us in start-up mode, before we could afford to get our own facility and people.”
For a company whose products would ultimately go into patients, trust was not something to be handed out lightly. Mark found it in the way Benchmark approached laboratory equipment.
“We’d seen how they treated lab equipment moves and that gave us confidence they could handle the implants and instrument sets in our business,” he says.
What followed was a relationship that grew as WG Healthcare grew. “We were a fast-moving business and Benchmark adapted to our growth as we grew, adding more resource and space where we needed it. They were very customer centric,” Mark recalls. Looking back, he is in no doubt about the impact that support had.
He added: “The whole scenario of them taking on an unknown start-up was instrumental in growing a business that was eventually sold to a large American corporation four years later. Without their help it would have been very difficult to start, and it allowed us to focus on our strength in sales.”
He describes the people behind Benchmark as “friendly, professional, always willing to help and be flexible to meet the customer need,” and points to something that has clearly stayed consistent over the years. “Small enough to be proactive but with a size and experience to give the customer comfort that they are experts in their field.”
Reflecting on the anniversary, Mark’s message is warm and direct. “Congratulations on 25 years. That is a testament to their professionalism, their expertise and their customer centric approach.
He added: And a big thank you from us at WG Healthcare, as you gave us the start we needed to grow our business.”
A longer partnership: asecos since 2014
Where Harry’s story captures the founding years and Mark’s captures a short but pivotal partnership, Les Day, Commercial Director at asecos Ltd, represents the kind of long-term relationship Benchmark has built its reputation on. asecos has worked with Benchmark since 2014, delivering safety cabinets to end users across the country.
Les Day, Commercial Director at asecos Ltd
“We were seeking a professional company that could manage the movement of our safety cabinets throughout the UK, particularly for point of use deliveries, and opened discussions with Benchmark,” Les explains.
What Benchmark now provides goes well beyond simple transport. “Benchmark provide an end to end package for the delivery of our products to end-user customers, from receiving the cabinets at their warehouse, managing the contact with end users to arrange suitable delivery dates, through to final delivery, either behind first door or point of use.” asecos also holds a designated floor space within Benchmark’s warehouse for stock cabinets, a detail that says a lot about how the relationship has deepened over the years.
The decision to work with Benchmark in the first place came down to familiarity with the world asecos operates in. “Benchmark were already familiar with the type of buildings of our end customers, due to their long experience in moving laboratories or high quality laboratory equipment,” Les says, adding that “their ability to offer the end-to-end package with dedicated account management was also a deciding factor.”
As asecos has expanded within the UK, Benchmark has expanded with them. “As our business within the UK has grown, they too have increased the fleet and the staffing levels to support that growth.
I believe the trading relationship has had mutual benefits for both parties.” Les is also clear about what sets the company apart from other providers asecos has worked with: “dedication, customer service and efficiency.”
His view on what has carried Benchmark to 25 years is one that speaks to a wider truth about the business.
“I believe that their focus on the scientific and biotech sector, rather than trying to cater to mass sectors, has been critical to their success. Additionally, they have built up an experienced team of office staff and specialist drivers and installers who actually care about the service they provide.”
What has actually changed
Read across these three accounts and a pattern starts to emerge. The equipment Harry was installing in the early 2000s, freezers, incubators and Class II safety cabinets, sits in much the same category as the equipment Benchmark moves today. What has changed is the scale, the complexity and the level of care that equipment now demands.
Modern lab and biotech equipment tends to be more sensitive, more expensive and often more temperature dependent than it was 25 years ago, particularly with the growth of cell and gene therapy, biobanking and advanced diagnostics. That shift is reflected directly in Benchmark’s current service range, which now includes dedicated freezer and LN2 transport, with units monitored for power and temperature throughout the journey, something that simply was not part of the conversation when Harry was strapping equipment into the back of a van.
The business itself has changed shape too…
Founded in 2001 as a small, privately owned operation, Benchmark is now ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 accredited, Safe Contractor Approved, holds FORS silver accreditation, and is a member of the RHA. It has also been awarded a Bronze medal by EcoVadis for sustainability, placing it among the top 35 percent of companies assessed under that framework. None of that existed in any formal sense in the early days Harry describes, when the culture was built on trust, common sense and a willingness to go and buy whatever tool was needed to finish the job.
What has not changed is the underlying approach. Mark’s description of a team that is “small enough to be proactive but with a size and experience to give the customer comfort” could just as easily describe the company Harry joined in 2002. Les’s point about a focus on the scientific and biotech sector, rather than chasing volume across every type of logistics work, explains why customers like asecos and WG Healthcare have been able to grow their own businesses on the back of Benchmark’s support.
Looking ahead
Twenty five years is an enormous milestone for any privately owned business, particularly one operating in as specialised a field as laboratory and scientific logistics.
Now, Benchmark’s services cover relocation, white glove delivery, freezer and LN2 transport, 3PL warehousing and dropshipping, and equipment recycling, alongside additional support such as decontamination, validation and commissioning through its collaborators.
As laboratories continue to handle increasingly sensitive and high value equipment, and as sectors like biotech and medtech continue to expand, the demand for a logistics partner that genuinely understands the science behind the equipment is only likely to grow.
If the last 25 years are anything to go by, that is exactly the niche Benchmark intends to keep filling: not the biggest name in logistics, but, as its customers repeatedly point out, one of the most trusted.
As Mark Goddard put it, reflecting on the help his own start up received: “Without their help it would have been very difficult to start.” After 25 years, that is as good a summary as any of what Benchmark Services set out to do, and what it continues to do today.