Bott has installed archiving equipment at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh to complete its move of three million of the UK’s most important plant specimens.

Over 1000 protective metal cabinets, which provide capacity for almost 50,000 storage files, are now being used to hold delicate specimens dating back up to 300 years. The cabinets were developed to a bespoke design, based on the Royal Botanic Garden’s requirements and the company’s wide experience of storage solutions.The move of millions of specimens at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh has taken several months to complete and coincides with their reclassification using 21st Century DNA techniques.

Mark Sinden, Sales Director said: “The use of our cabinets to store some of the world’s most important plant collections shows the durability and versatility of our storage offer. We do not underestimate our responsibilities in ensuring that the specimens need to be preserved to the highest possible standards. This has been a hugely exciting project for us, and we’ve been delighted to work with the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh on this project.”

The cabinets were manufactured at Bott Ltd’s award-winning factory in Cornwall from 1.5mm powder-coated steel. Bott Ltd’s R+D team created a bespoke stacking system, allowing them to be fixed together on every side, ensuring the cabinets remain airtight. The system included magnetic rubber door seals to provide air and dust tight storage and were fitted with handles and external card holders to match existing cabinets.

The Bott Ltd installation is part of a £1.5 million project to expand the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh's herbarium, providing additional space for the 10,000 new samples which arrive each year. The extension to the herbarium will allow it to continue growing for the next 20 years. Dr David Harris, the herbarium’s Curator said: “This move has marked a massive change in the way we organise our collection and we simply needed the best possible storage to ensure the preservation of these delicate specimens, dating back to Darwin’s voyage on the Beagle. In addition, we needed to ensure the collection is easily accessible to allow us to maintain our position at the forefront of botanical research.”

With a 30 year history of manufacturing in the UK, Bott Ltd is widely regarded as the market leaders in storage systems and has also undertaken bespoke and off-the-shelf installations for the aerospace, education and research industries.