Support sustainability and maximize value for your lab by selling or buying used instrumentation

Judit Losonczi
Agilent Refurbished Instrument Business Manager

Jon Welsh
Agilent Refurbished Instrument Marketing Manager

As a laboratory manager, you are responsible for planning your lab’s instrumentation investment—including funding, sample capacity, technology expansion and/or replacement. In this role, you are also tasked with considering the cost vs. benefit of moving to newer technologies while evaluating what to do with older instruments. Sometimes your lab’s vision for the future may involve a change in research direction causing a re-evaluation of your lab’s instrument portfolio. In today’s lab, technology is constantly advancing presenting you with a large variety of vendor and instrumentation choices. Your goal is to obtain the best value for your lab while considering budget, application, business, training, and viable support. To meet these sometimes conflicting objectives, you may evaluate buying used instruments, or investigate selling your underutilized instruments—but these decisions may come with risks.

High performance and reliability with Agilent Certified Pre-Owned Instruments

Introducing a used instrument into your lab from an unknown vendor can compromise productivity and add unforeseen costs. Customer satisfaction surveys for the analytical industry reveal that a key value to lab managers is the combination of high performance and high reliability that is delivered by Agilent (dark circles in Table 1). To help more customers afford top technology, Agilent now sells Agilent Certified Pre-Owned Instruments. As the designer and manufacturer, only Agilent can re-condition them and deliver the quality and performance you expect.

Table 1. Value scale comparison on Agilent Certified Pre-Owned Instruments

Figure 1. 6500 Series Accurate-Mass Quadrupole Time-of-Flight (Q-TOF) LC/MS.

Pre-Owned Q-TOF system provides perfect fit for busy, international lab

Dr. Frederik Pruijn is a Senior Research fellow at the Auckland Cancer Society Research Centre (ACSRC) based in the School of Medical Sciences within the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. The ACSRC has an international reputation for its high-quality research on the discovery and development of new small-molecule drugs for cancer therapy. Currently, the ACSRC has 83 staff, seven honorary associates, and 15 post-graduate research students. To date, 11 new drugs that have been discovered in the ACSRC, of which five were first-in-class and have been taken to clinical trial.

Dr. Pruijn had been looking at expanding his lab capabilities with a high end Q-TOF system (Figure 1) when he learned from his Agilent account manager about another lab that was taking advantage of Agilent’s instrument buyback program to manage under-utilized equipment. This started a conversation about the option of purchasing an Agilent Certified Pre-Owned Q-TOF. Agilent Certified Pre-Owned Instruments come with a full year warranty (like a new system), have been restored to “like new” condition, and are tested to the same specifications as the new version of the same instrument (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Example of Agilent Certified Pre-Owned refurbishment test report.

The Agilent Certified Pre-Owned Instrument refurbishment process

Dr. Prujin commented that balance of performance, ease-of-use, cost, trust in vendor, and local support drove their instrument choice. The facility is heavily utilized, so uptime and reliability were also key factors in choosing the Agilent Certified Pre-Owned Q-TOF. For them the system was the right instrument at the right time and price for the facility. The instrument since has shipped and installed with flying colors and started its second life contributing to cancer research.

The speed in which an instrument can be up and running can also be a key buying factor for our customers. Labs occasionally lose essential instruments due to unexpected circumstances like fire or water damage, which can present an urgent need, often with very limited capital funds. Agilent Certified Pre-Owned Instruments are often available with fast delivery and can be the solution to a difficult situation. Because there is a limited stock of Agilent Certified Pre-Owned Instruments available, units sometimes sell out quickly. This urgency can sometimes be used as justification for a faster than normal purchase request. In situations like this, lab managers may be allowed to bypass normal bidding requirements to be able to take advantage of a great deal.

High performance, reliability, and support for green initiatives with Agilent

Last, but not least, being an environmentally conscious supplier is a core belief for Agilent. The Agilent instrument buy-back program, which supplies instruments for refurbishment, is just one of the many ways Agilent is able to provide product sustainability and recycling options to customers with green initiatives. What’s more, all refurbished equipment perform up to Agilent’s standards, come with a 12-month warranty, and are known for their high reliability and superior performance. Contact your Agilent Representative today for more information on the Agilent buy-back program or to request a quote.

Stay informed about the applications that are important to you

Subscribe to Access Agilent
Our free customized
monthly eNewsletter

Article Directory – February 2016