Awarded without open competition
Awarded without open competition. The buyer went directly to one or a few suppliers instead of advertising the contract. Procurement rules allow this only in specific cases, such as extreme urgency, when only one supplier can do the work, or for call-offs from an existing framework.
Key facts
- Buyer
- Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew · Ministry or any other national or federal authority, including their regional or local subdivisions
- Supplier
- Mettler-Toledo GmbH
- Value
- £54,000
- Procedure
- Single tender action (below threshold)
- Sector
- Laboratory & precision equipment · Laboratory, optical and precision equipments (excl. glasses) (CPV 38000000)
- Region
- London
- Official notice
- View on Contracts Finder
- Timeline
-
- Contract date12 Feb 2025
- Published26 Mar 2025Published 42 days after the contract date
Description
The Millennium Seed Bank (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew) houses the world's largest ex situ collection of wild seeds. Fruit and seed weight measurements are crucial for seed morphological studies, gravimetric moisture content experiments, and estimating seed numbers in large collections. When seeds or collections are too small to be measured with standard analytical balances, it is important to have specialized equipment to accurately measure seed weight, such as a microbalance. Specifically, we require a microbalance with at least 0.1 µg readability, internal calibration, a minimum total capacity of 2 g, and a clear, responsive display. Additionally, it should have the capability to transfer balance readings directly into a computer spreadsheet at the press of a button.
About the supplier
Mettler-Toledo GmbH: every public contract they have won.