Brulines: "We'll work with government's weights and measures lab

Brulines, which supplies beer flow monitoring equipment to the pub sector, said it would be happy to work with the government's weights and measures laboratory in order to ensure its controversial kit was accurate.

The Stockton-On-Tees group was responding to comments made by pubs minister John Healey last week regarding the accuracy of its technology.

In his announcement outlining a £4m support package for the UK's pubs, Healey said he wanted the industry to "voluntarily ensure that all such measuring equipment is calibrated by the National Weights and Measurement Laboratory (NWML)".

If the industry couldn't manage this task Healey said the government would "prescribe the equipment to ensure fairness".

In a statement Brulines said that evidence submitted to the Business, Innovations and Skills (BIS) Committee by Titan Enterprises, which makes its flow meters, illustrated the accuracy of its kit and showed it was reliable at measuring liquid flow "to a high degree of repeatability over a sustained period of time".

Brulines said its flow meters were calibrated under the same conditions as beer was dispensed in line.

"This is carried out using a calibrated measuring vessel produced by a specialist manufacturer and calibrated to the highest accuracy levels by a statutory Weights and Measures Authority," it added.

The group said it "looked forward to working with the NWML to fulfil any future requirements or changes in procedure, as we have already done voluntarily with Trading Standards".

Brulines' equipment came in for particularly heavy criticism in a report published last year by the Business and Enterprise Committee, the predecessor to the current BIS Committee.

The group meanwhile announced it had bought a company called Energy Level Systems, which supplies measuring technology to petrol station forecourts, for £700,000.

Brulines' chief executive James Dickson said the acquisition "underlines our intention to replicatein the forecourt market our success in the leisure sector".