- Who We Are
- What We Do
- Why We Do
- Where We Are
Who We Are
At Joe Biden’s inauguration as President of the United States, someone who spoke made this remark “we are more than we have been, and we are less than we hope to be”. Country or company, what a good way to describe ambition! These words describe Tristel’s past and future well.
Today, my perception of Tristel is of a small organisation with two hundred employees dispersed across fourteen countries – a far-flung community bound together by its ambition. Our team is young and split evenly by gender. For many, this is the first “proper” job they have had.
I love the story: the young graduate who gets that “proper” job with Tristel and fifteen years later has travelled to, and worked in, several countries, performed many roles, to serve the people who deliver care day in and day out in hospitals – our customers – trying his or her hardest to help them with their even more significant job.
A shareholder of ours once wrote on their website “when we add to the team, we develop that individual and aim to keep them for the best years of their professional lives. We recognise that our people are our primary asset, and we make every effort to ensure that our team is a happy one”. This message captures perfectly what we hope to do for our employees.
We risk a great conceit when we congratulate ourselves on creating the work environment that makes for a happy team. Of course, at times we fail; always for some, and sometimes for all. But for the most part, I think we do succeed, and we do so by trying to be kind and generous in what we do and how we act.
Many years ago, I was asked what if anything would describe our culture. I responded with three words.
CONSIDERATE, NO-NONSENSE, ENERGETIC.
These are the words we strive to always keep in our minds: whether we are dealing with conflict or a challenging situation; describing our products and how they compare to others; or communicating and interacting with our customers. Wherever and whenever, we hope these three words guide our actions, reactions and how we talk.
Our Company will continue to grow and develop. Its people will change; but I hope it remains a happy place to work.
Our home also welcomes anyone in the later stage of their career; and those that wish to restart a career. Our eldest employee is a centurion!
Paul Swinney, CEO, November 2023
What We Do
We are an infection prevention company. The entire purpose of our business is to prevent the transmission of microbes from one object or person to another. We achieve our mission by applying a very powerful biocidal chemistry – chlorine dioxide – to the target environmental surface or medical device. We are one of a very few companies worldwide that can legitimately claim to be exclusively an infection prevention business.
Our mission is most relevant to hospitals where the risks of infection to individuals are highest.
We have two key areas of focus in the hospital: i) the high-level disinfection of medical devices. Our medical device disinfectants product range is branded Tristel, and ii) the sporicidal disinfection of environmental surfaces. Our surface disinfectants product range is branded Cache.
Why We Do
We pursue our purpose of preventing infection in hospitals because infection causes illness and death and places a heavy cost on individuals and society. We can achieve our purpose because we have developed a proprietary powerful disinfection technology utilising the molecule chlorine dioxide. The chemical symbol for chlorine dioxide is ClO2.
We are unique worldwide in using ClO2 as a high-performance disinfectant. We are also unique in performing high-level disinfection of medical devices via manual application of the chemistry.
We have focused on manual methods because they free up healthcare funding that otherwise must be tied up in automated equipment to perform disinfection of medical devices. We believe that our methods deliver outcomes that are equivalent in terms of efficacy, patient, and user safety to those delivered by automation. Furthermore, our methods eliminate capital expenditure and the cost of maintaining the capital equipment. They require no services in the form of water or electricity, and they are mobile and easily transported to the place of patient need.
Because of these great attributes of our products, we have a long-term ambition to make them available to the lesser-resourced healthcare systems of the world.
Where We Are
We are within the hospital – our mission is most relevant to hospitals where the risks of infection to individuals are highest.
Infection prevention is a basic requirement for the safe and effective provision of healthcare. This is true in all hospitals in all countries. Our primary focus is on the acute hospital, but the trend is for medical device procedures to take place outside of the hospital, and the pool of opportunity for the sale of our products can be expected to expand substantially over the long term.
A hospital is a vast, multi-faceted organisation. When it comes to high-level disinfecting medical devices, we target the clinical departments that carry out diagnostic procedures with small heat-sensitive devices. These include: the nasendoscope used in ear, nose and throat departments; the laryngoscope blades used in emergency medicine; tonometers used in ophthalmology, and ultrasound probes used in both women and men’s health. In these departments we are the only simple to implement, affordable, high-performance disinfection method available.
The cleaning and disinfection of environmental surfaces in hospitals is ubiquitous. Our Cache products can be used everywhere.