Facilitating further growth, SPT Labtech continues to transform the life sciences sector with ingenuity and innovation
Dedicated to ‘inspiring ingenuity with world-leading lab automation’, SPT Labtech (SPT) provides laboratory solutions that are changing the world of automation within life sciences. Specializing in the manufacture of cutting-edge technologies for genomics, drug discovery, sample management, and structural biology applications, its products are designed to revolutionize complex laboratory processes, helping scientists to improve the quality and efficiency of their research. Its mission is driving a greater purpose: to accelerate life science research and make a real difference to human health.
SPT prides itself on being an end-to-end solutions provider and maintains close collaboration with its customers throughout. From initial conception right through
to prototyping, testing and manufacture, its comprehensive scope of capabilities provides true innovation to its clients, transforming ideas into industry-leading results.
Manufacturing Today has been following SPT’s journey over the course of the last few years, covering its growth and development as it launches new innovations and pioneers true industry excellence, despite an onslaught of macroeconomic challenges. Last year, we were joined by Rob Walton, Chief Executive Officer, to discuss the launch of SPT’s ‘firefly’ – an intelligent all-in-one liquid handling device designed boost the speed, efficiency and precision of genomic research. The firefly® has since gained great momentum across a number of sectors within the life sciences industry. In July 2025, Manufacturing Today reconnects with Rob to take a deep dive into the SPT’s evolution over the past 12 months as it eyes further product development and expansion. He begins our conversation by offering an update on the progression of firefly® since its launch.
“In the last 12 months, we’ve completed some further iterations of our firefly platform – including the introduction of a new module called firefly+, which is starting to take root in the market,” Rob shares. “firefly+ expands the capabilities in a highly space efficient manner, extends user walk-away time, increased labware capacity, as well as thermocycling capability. This offers a more hands-free approach, so that the research scientists can spend more time on the scientific work and less on the manual management of the instrument. As a part of that, we’ve also released our automatic tip loading head, which enables the pipetting head to change tips on a regular basis and, again, reduces the amount of manual intervention needed. These two innovations have really enhanced the performance and utility of the firefly® platform and have made it a much more complete product, one that really helps the researchers to automate their experiments and progress their drug development work faster and more efficiently.
“A lot of the growth that we’ve seen over the last year has come from the launch and growth of firefly® in the market. As with most new products, it takes time to get fully established, but it’s now getting great customer placements all over the world. We’ve had a lot of positive feedback from customers throughout the life sciences industry, including academia, biotech, pharmaceutical, and diagnostic companies.”
Research and development lie at the core of SPT’s day-to-day operations and form a key part of its ethos. For SPT, the R&D process doesn’t end once a product hits the market; the company is constantly utilizing customer feedback to assist in the continuous development and improvement of all its products, and firefly+ is a great example of this.
“The key aspect of R&D is truly understanding the customer. We spend a lot of time working alongside our customers to help them improve their workflows on a day-to-day basis. Our R&D teams – of which includes engineers, product managers, developers, and applications specialists – work in close collaboration with our customers to identify their pain points and generate solutions. We can then start to develop prototypes and MVPs (minimum viable products) in some cases, which can be tested at our customers’ sites for them to supply feedback,” Rob highlights.
“We’re also working heavily to improve our production facilities. We’re spending a lot of time implementing lean manufacturing across all of our sites worldwide. This focus will drive an even higher bar of efficiency, quality, and capacity, which will ultimately allow us to scale up our volumes in a way that allows us to keep up with customer demand and expectations.”
One of SPT’s most recent developments of late is its increased expansion into cryo-EM (cryo-electron microscopy), which is being supported by the opening of a new manufacturing facility in Germany. Cryo-EM is a technique that involves scientists freezing proteins down to -150o so that their shapes and structures can be accurately assessed through an electron microscope, and is fundamental in many structural biology applications, particularly drug development. The company already supports cryo-EM processes, and the new facility in Germany will help SPT to accommodate its increased demand and capacity.
“Cryo-EM is a critical analytical technique within the structural biology field. The ability to understand the three-dimensional structure of a protein is an important part of the drug development process as it helps to determine how the target protein interacts with the drugs and, ultimately, whether the drug changes the activity of that protein or not,” Rob explains. “The demand for cryo-EM grids has increased significantly over recent years as researchers have adopted this important new analytical approach, and we need to ensure supply keeps up with demand. We already have an existing facility in Germany, but we’ve invested significantly in building a state-of-the-art production capability, which will help us to increase our overall production volumes so that we can continue to supply top quality grids to the structural biology markets. It’s a very important part of our business and we’re looking forward to seeing it all come online.”
2025, thus far, has thrust a profusion of challenges upon both the manufacturing industry and the wider economic landscape, however SPT is well-positioned to continue to grow and succeed.
“Like many businesses across the world who operate in the USA, we’ve been affected by tariff challenges and changes within the market,” Rob says. “Looking ahead, we’re hoping to consolidate our efforts and support our teams and customers across the USA, and the rest of the world. We’re going to really focus on how we adapt to the new realities of the market; we’ve had to think about where we manufacture our equipment and reconfigure our supply chain. Hopefully, we’ll see some market recovery in the near future, but if we can continue to stay adaptable and flexible in that way, we will be able to successful through the second half of the year and continue the upward growth trend we’ve been on for the last 12 months.”
As SPT embarks further upon its growth trajectory, Manufacturing Today looks forward to seeing what its next chapter holds. As our conversation draws to a close, Rob concludes by homing in on SPT’s most important asset.
“I want to say a big thank you to the whole SPT team for all the hard work they’ve put in. One of the measures of our success is how we work together as a team, and I’m very proud that the combined effort of everybody working together is really helping us to deliver the success that we’re achieving at the moment.”